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TRUE STORIES OF GREAT AMERICANS 



DANIEL BOONE 



•The 




THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS 
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 

TORONTO 




Daniel Boone 

From the painting by Chester Harding, owned by Colonel Reuben 
T. Durrett, of Louisville, Kentucky. (See page 240.) 



DANIEL BOONE 



BY 
LUCILE GULLIVER 



" Still do the generations press for room, 
And surely they shall have it. Tell them this : 
Say, * Boone, the old State-Builder, hath gone forth 
Again, close on the sunset; and that there 
He gives due challenge to that Indian race 
Whose lease to this majestic land, misused, 
It hath pleased God to cancel.' " 

— William Ross Wallace. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1916 

Ail rights reserved 






Copyright, 1916, 
By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Set up and electrotyped. Published April, 1916. 



Nori0ooti H^xtvi 

J. 8. Gushing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 

C' '{ \ ^ ■ i." 



APR-^2Q 1915 
©CU427788 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I 

PAGR 

A Backward Glance i 



CHAPTER II 
Pennsylvania Pioneers 6 

CHAPTER III 
A Plucky Border Boy 15 

CHAPTER IV 
The Journey to the Yadkin 26 

CHAPTER V 
Campaigning with Braddock 33 

CHAPTER VI 
A Pioneer Wedding 43 

V 



vi CONTENTS 



CHAPTER VII 

FAGB 

Fighting the Cherokees 55 



CHAPTER VIII 
Exploring New Country 65 

CHAPTER IX 
Among Hostile Indians 76 

CHAPTER X 
Alone in the Wilderness 91 

CHAPTER XI 
The Hero of the Southwest 99 

CHAPTER XII 
Making the Wilderness Road . . . • "S 

CHAPTER XIII 
Boone's Settlement 130 



CONTENTS vii 

CHAPTER XIV 

PACK 

"A Land Hard to Hold" 148 

CHAPTER XV 
Boone becomes an Indian 159 

CHAPTER XVI 
The Siege of the Shawnees 170 

CHAPTER XVII 
Public Servant and Indian Fighter . . .189 

CHAPTER XVIII 
The Flight from Civilization .... 208 

CHAPTER XIX 
Traveling toward the Sunset .... 229 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



Daniel Boone 

Boone's First Glimpse of Kentucky 
The Sycamore Shoals Treaty 
Cumberland Gap .... 
Boone's Cabin in Missouri 
The Boone Monument at Cumberland Gap 



Frontispiece a' 

FACING PAGE 

78 ^' 



118 



IX 



DANIEL BOONE 

CHAPTER I 
A Backward Glance 

In a sheer Southern mountain pass, known as 
Cumberland Gap, there stands a monument in 
honor of a man who cut a road. 

Many countries have had important highways. 
Some have been wide and firm to please ambitious 
kings. Others, rough and winding up and down 
the land, have been worn by beasts of burden, by 
soldiers, or similar messengers of government or 
trade. Our American roadway was a mere trail, 
blazed through thicket and timber, and the road- 
maker was a backwoodsman. 

He was born in the early days of America, when 
our great land was largely wilderness, with white 
men living only in the lowlands east of the Alle- 
ghany Mountains, where they themselves or their 
fathers had settled after the long crossing from the 
Old World. Beyond the mountains, as far as the 
Pacific Ocean, lay forests, plains, and wastes, un- 
known and uninhabited save by wild creatures and 



2 DANIEL BOONE 

hostile Indians. As the young country grew in 
power and population, the English colonists needed 
this virgin land, and it became some one's duty to 
blaze a trail through this trackless region westward 
over which settlers might make their way. 

As it happened, a gaunt, blue-eyed, determined 
man, then living in North Carolina, Daniel Boone 
by name, had spent many years hunting, fighting, 
and learning the ways of Indians and woodland 
beasts, and when the time came to cleave a way 
through this western wilderness, he was able and 
ready to do it. He laid his plans, gathered to- 
gether his volunteers, and in the spring of the 
year disappeared in the forest ; and, after chopping 
and burning his way for two hundred miles through 
land now lying in North Carolina, Tennessee, 
Virginia, and Kentucky, he emerged in the present 
Blue Grass region, the paradise of game and the 
fertile land for which the settlers longed. The 
fame of his achievement spread far and near, and 
in his footsteps followed thousands of men, women, 
and children, seeking homes in this wonderful new 
country. Along his trail a young nation took its 
way. 

In 1775, Daniel Boone left behind him in the 
wilderness this narrow track winding from east 
to west. For twenty years emigrants traversed 



A BACKWARD GLANCE 3 

it on foot or on horseback and it remained little 
more than a bridle-path. Then, by order of the 
legislature, Kentucky's part was widened for 
wagon travel, although its ledges, sloughs, and 
forest dangers were hardly lessened. Later, when 
more favorable courses to the west were opened, 
portions of the trail fell into disuse, and brush and 
trees overgrew them and once more claimed them 
for the forest. Yet neither wilderness nor time 
could obliterate the memory of Daniel Boone's 
Road. 

When Boone and his handful of road-makers 
came down from the mountains and passed through 
Cumberland Gap, it was a wild notch five hundred 
feet deep, well timbered with hard woods and 
abounding in game. To-day it is still an impressive 
cleft through the hills, but no longer untamed coun- 
try. On a certain June day, in 191 5, a thousand 
people of the vicinity and from a greater distance 
gathered there to dedicate a monument to the 
picturesque pioneer who, quite unconscious that 
he was cutting one of the historic roadways of the 
world, had rested in that Gap almost a century 
and a half before. 

In a way the celebration was a double one. For 
some years the Daughters of the American Revolu- 
tion, with the help of descendants of pioneers, of 



4 DANIEL BOONE 

old inhabitants, of historians and government maps, 
had been ferreting out the lost course of the trail, 
and had succeeded in tracing it and in marking its 
entire length from Boone's home on the Yadkin 
River in the Old North State to Boonesborough 
in Kentucky, where the road ended and the building 
of the West began. The monument in Cumberland 
Gap was the last marker of the long series of 
markers that were placed, and celebrated the com- 
pletion of the patriotic task as well as the heroism 
of the great backwoodsman and his associates. 

The memorial stands upon a slight eminence. It 
is a simple structure built of stone and has four 
faces, each bearing a bronze tablet and each sym- 
bolizing one of the four states through which the 
trail wound. There at Cumberland Gap three of 
these states meet — Kentucky, Tennessee, and Vir- 
ginia — and from the pinnacle, towering above the 
Gap, the other, North Carolina, may be seen beyond 
the range. With fitting ceremony the monument 
was unveiled and presented to the Commonwealth 
of Kentucky, received in the name of the governor, 
and dedicated with many glowing tributes to 
bravery, sacrifice, and hardy manhood. Thus in 
stone and tablet have Americans remembered 
Daniel Boone and his Wilderness Road. 

After the applause had died away and the guests 



A BACKWARD GLANCE 5 

had enjoyed lavish Southern hospitality, the cele- 
bration came to an end, and merrily on foot and 
horseback, by carriage and by automobile, the 
people took their way home. The monument was 
left alone in the stillness of the Gap to be caressed 
by sun and wind. 

Like an embodied spirit it stands there, telling 
briefly its own noble story. Yet the whole story 
of the red-blood life of a man like Daniel Boone is 
a long one because he served his country in thrilling 
days and because he was very human and lovable. 



CHAPTER II 

Pennsylvania Pioneers 

Daniel Boone may have inherited his spirit of 
adventure. His grandfather, George Boone, was a 
weaver, in a humble way, of Bradnich, near Exeter, 
England, where he was a member of the Society of 
Friends. The Quakers, or Friends, suffered many 
persecutions on account of their religion, and 
William Penn, one of their number, dreamed of a 
refuge for them in the New World. 

In 1682, on an October day bright with autumn 
color, he sailed up the Delaware River in the little 
English bark Welcome, and took possession of a 
grant of land made him by King Charles II, where 
he intended "to lay the foundation of a free colony 
for all mankind" and for the Quakers in particular. 
In honor of Penn's father, an admiral, this new 
province was christened Pennsylvania by Charles, 
but Penn, being a modest man, appealed to the 
king and offered twenty guineas to the secretary 
to change it. "Had he appealed to the secretary 
and bribed the king," wrote one of his biographers 
facetiously, "he might have had his wish." 

6 



PENNSYLVANIA PIONEERS 7 

As time wore on, glowing reports of this *'Holy 
Experiment," as Penn's colony was sometimes called, 
reached the hamlet near Exeter, and George, his 
wife, and their seven sons and two daughters 
weighed these reports seriously. The thought of 
a Hfe free from persecution and rich in the spoils of a 
land said to be blossoming like the rose appealed 
to them. The young son named Squire, especially 
curious, longed for definite information, and went 
about picturing this far paradise as best he could. 
News came all too slowly in those days to suit the 
impetuosity of youth, and after many family con- 
sultations, Squire, then about sixteen years of age, 
accompanied by his older brother George and his 
sister Sarah, sailed from England in a small, uncom- 
fortable, emigrant ship to see for himself the pos- 
sibilities in Pennsylvania. As Squire set forth 
upon this great adventure, wondering and planning 
in boyish fashion, he Httle dreamed that his voyage 
would be recorded in history because of a son, 
Daniel, to be born to him in America. 

We can well imagine the feverish interest of the 
Boones as they approached Philadelphia and looked 
upon the crowd wont to gather on the shore when- 
ever white sails were seen. Ships beating up the 
Delaware River in those days were all-important, 
as practically everything came to the province by 



8 DANIEL BOONE 

sea. English and Dutch vessels brought news and 
goods from the Old World and from farther ports, 
and packets plied regularly between the North and 
South. There were no railroads, and the four- 
horse coaches, rocking along between towns on 
the eastern coast, were slow and uncertain carriers. 
So Squire's ship was welcomed with the usual 
interest, and he himself came on shore, finding 
there a touch of home in the familiar high-crowned 
Quaker hat and Quaker dress of gray. 

In many ways, as reports had said, times were 
prosperous, especially for those who lived in towns. 
The young capital itself, laid out in checker-board 
regularity according to Penn's own plans, was a 
substantial little community of comfortable homes 
where Squire found not only English Quakers but 
also Welsh, Scotch-Irish, Swedish, Dutch, French, 
and German colonists living free from Old World 
oppression. 

Now and then he saw gayly clad Indians stealing 
silently along the streets, and from the wharves 
he watched ships from far parts of the world, parts 
even as distant as Surinam and the French division 
of Hispaniola. Trade kept laborers and merchants 
alert and busy, and made it possible for well-to-do 
housewives to procure furnishings and table deli- 
cacies so fine that even worthies mentioned them 
in their diaries. 



PENNSYLVANIA PIONEERS 9 

"A most sinful feast!" one of these some years 
later said of a Philadelphia dinner. '' Everything 
which could dehght the eye or allure the taste; 
curds and creams, jellies, sweetmeats of various 
kinds, twenty sorts of tarts, fools, trifles, floating 
islands, whipped sillabubs, almonds, pears and 

peaches." 

A visiting French prince remembered a certain 
tea party with equal pleasure. ''The house is 
small, but well ordered and neat," he wrote ; ''the 
doors and tables of superb, well-poHshed mahogany ; 
the locks and andirons of poHshed brass. ... I 
took some of the excellent tea and would have taken 
more I think, if the Ambassador had not kindly 
warned me at the twelfth cup that I must put my 
spoon across my cup when I wished to bring this 
warm water question to an end." 

In spite of its busy and prosperous air, however, 
Philadelphia was Httle more than a village, with the 
frontier of the great western wilderness distant 
only a few miles from its outlying fields and 
orchards. There, in the border settlements, life 
was far different. Houses were rude, unhewn log 
cabins, erected in clearings and bounded by dense 
woodland full of sharp, wild eyes spying upon 
human intruders. House furnishings and clothing 
were equally crude, creature comforts few, and, 



lO DANIEL BOONE 

had it not been for the great fireplace built in one 
end of each cabin, and for the iron pot, hanging 
from the crane and puffing forth savory odors, 
these cabins would have seemed little like homes. 
Even tea and coffee were practically unknown on 
the frontier or were regarded as ''slops which did 
not stick by the ribs." One pioneer, born on the 
border, recorded his earliest recollections of a tea- 
cup and saucer and of coffee. While traveling as a 
boy, he spent a night at an inn. 

''When supper came on," he says, "a little cup 
stood in a bigger one with some brownish-looking 
stuff in it, which was neither milk, hominy nor 
broth. What to do with these little cups and the 
spoon belonging to them I could not tell, and I was 
afraid to ask. ... I therefore watched attentively 
to see what the big folks would do with their little 
cups and spoons. I imitated them, and found the 
taste of the coffee disagreeable beyond anything 
I ever had tasted in my life. I continued to drink 
as the rest of the company did, with the tears 
streaming from my eyes, but when it was to end 
I was at a loss to know, as the little cups were filled 
immediately after being emptied. This circum- 
stance distressed me very much, as I durst not say 
I had had enough. Looking attentively at the 
grown persons, I saw one man turn his little cup 



PENNSYLVANIA PIONEERS ii 

bottom upwards and put his little spoon across it. 
I observed that after this his cup was not filled 
again. I followed his example, and to my great 
satisfaction, the result as to my cup was the same." 
Squire had never known luxuries, and boylike 
preferred the wilds about Philadelphia, where he 
roamed at will, while Sarah Boone met and married 
a German. Squire's brother George, confident in 
the future, returned to England to report to his 
parents, and, when all could be made ready, to 
pilot them and the other children across the sea. 
The elder Boones bravely dismantled their home, 
bade farewell to old associations, and in October, 
1 7 17, after a journey of two months, a courageous 
journey and perhaps a sad one, they all landed in 
Philadelphia. 

The Boones lingered there only a short time. As 
they preferred the country, they became a frontier 
family at once, welcoming the hardships of border 
life. After brief stays in Abingdon and North 
Wales, they settled on the edge of the wood in 
Qley Township, in the beautiful valley of the 
Schuylkill River, where the elder George Boone 
lived out his days. 

Squire, meanwhile, after his explorations, had 
chosen to become a backwoodsman in North Wales, 
a hamlet of Welsh Quakers. The young men wel- 



12 DANIEL BOONE 

corned this ''man of rather small stature, fair com- 
plexion, and gray eyes," introduced him to their 
families, and made him feel at home ; and in time 
he fell in love with a certain Sarah Morgan, "a 
woman something over the common size, strong and 
active, with black hair and eyes, and raised in the 
Quaker order." According to Quaker usage, they 
probably announced that "with Divine permission 
and Friends' approbation they intended to marry 
each other," and after it was decided that the 
young people were "at liberty to accomplish their 
marriage," they were made man and wife on July 
23, 1720, in the little Quaker meetinghouse of 
Gwynedd Township. Friends and relatives feted 
them after the fashion of Quaker merrymaking — 
custom permitting the marriage day to "be charac- 
terized by cheerful enjoyment provided that those 
concerned do not pass the boundary line of Chris- 
tian simplicity and prudence" — and then they 
settled down as poor but thrifty "borderers" in a 
mere cabin, small and rough and bare, and built 
probably on rented land. Fortunately, "doors and 
windows of superb mahogany" and "twenty sorts 
of tarts " were not necessary to contentment. 

Early in the morning the border people rose. No 
eight-hour day was theirs ; their work lasted from 
sunrise to sunset, day in and day out, alike in good 



PENNSYLVANIA PIONEERS 13 

times and bad. After the cows had been milked 
and sent to pasture, and after breakfast had been 
eaten and the daily chores done, the men farmed, 
hunted, or pursued a trade in a small way. The 
women cooked and minded the dairy ; mended, spun 
and wove; made clothes and moccasins; weeded 
and hoed in the vegetable patch, and all the day had 
an eye to the children who were quite as lively and 
mischievous in those times as now. As we look 
back upon this border life, so wild and fresh, it 
appears rather pleasant. We forget the days of 
rain and snow, of tired bodies and aching backs, of 
illness, of poverty and discouragement. A hard 
and weary life it was in reality, a life to develop 
heroes. 

Twelve years or so passed in the Boone cabin in 
North Wales. With much labor the adjacent land 
had been cleared, a garden-patch had been made to 
flourish within the inclosure, a loom had been 
installed in the cabin as Squire had learned his 
father's trade, and with much thrift and forbearance 
a tiny sum of money had been laid away for a farm 
which they hoped some day to purchase. No longer 
were Squire and Sarah alone, for four children 
brightened the little cabin and kept their mother 
busy supplying clothing for small, active bodies and 
food for good appetites. 



14 DANIEL BOONE 

About this time they decided to move from North 
Wales to Oley Township, in the Berks County of 
to-day, where, with their savings, they were able 
to buy two hundred and fifty acres of land, situated 
on a creek and lying about eight miles from the 
present city of Reading. Grandfather Boone, as 
well as other members of the family, lived not far 
away, and there is little doubt but that Friends 
helped Squire Boone to clear his land and build 
his log cabin, the kindest welcome to newcomers in 
a country region. 

At last Squire Boone was an independent man, 
owning his land and his house, which was bare and 
simple, however, as the Boones were still poor, and 
life in Oley, as in North Wales, was filled with sever- 
ity and hardship. Perhaps, as the family sat about 
the new hearth and heard the wind blowing in their 
own strange woodland, this second home may have 
seemed happier than the old one, because of the 
hard work and self-denial which had made it 
possible. 

Here, in the Pennsylvania wilderness of the 
Schuylkill Valley, Daniel Boone was born on 
November 2, 1734. To-day the date of his birth 
is memorable, yet no one at the time, least of all 
his parents, dreamed that this boy would make a 
stir in the world. 



CHAPTER HI 
A Plucky Border Boy 

Being a frontier baby and the sixth in the family, 
little fuss was made over Daniel. He was given 
border fare and brought up in border ways, and 
probably left largely to amuse himself and to follow 
the example of his older brothers and sisters. 
Unfortunately, records of the first ten years of his 
life are all too meager, but we know well that a 
pioneer's cabin was an absorbing place in which to 
be a boy. 

Without doubt Daniel sat on a three-legged stool, 
and slept in a wooden bunk, and ate at a split-slab 
table, set with wooden bowls, trenchers, and noggins, 
with gourds and hard-shelled squashes for extra 
dishes. China was too expensive and impractical 
for pioneers. In some households, food was served 
in a large trencher, or platter, in the center of the 
table, from which all the family ate; in others, 
the head of the house served each member. 

And how good the food tasted seasoned with 
woodland appetites ! At breakfast there was 
johnny-cake and perhaps pone; at dinner, "hog 

IS 



i6 DANIEL BOONE 

and hominy'' or wild meat and vegetables ; at sup- 
per, milk and mush. 

The cooking was done in the j&replace. The 
great fire there, furnishing heat and ventilation, 
was never expected to go out. If it did, some one 
had to go to a neighbor to *' borrow fire," a shovel 
of coals or a burning brand, or had to strike a spark 
with flint and steel and catch it on a bit of rag or 
tow, as matches were unknown. The fire kept up 
a merry blaze, which at night flickered on Squire 
Boone's hunting arms and garments and on the 
clothes of the family hanging from wooden pegs 
around the walls. An early historian says that 
such open wardrobes ''announced to the stranger 
as well as to the neighbor the wealth or poverty 
of a family in their articles of clothing." 

Mrs. Boone stepped briskly about the cabin, 
busy at her many tasks. In summer she probably 
went barefooted, but in cold weather moccasins 
were worn. The usual dress of border women con- 
sisted of a petticoat and bed gown, a kind of dressing 
sack, made of linsey, a warm, substantial cloth of 
flax and wool ; a kerchief neatly crossed about the 
neck, and a sunbonnet of linen. 

The men's attire was patterned somewhat after 
Indian fashion — a long hunting-shirt of Hnsey, 
coarse linen, or of dressed deerskins; trousers 



A PLUCKY BORDER BOY 17 

and leggings of cloth or skin, and deerskin moc- 
casins. The latter were Httle protection in cold 
or wet weather, when ''wearing them," it was said, 
"was only a decent way of going barefooted." 
The belt, which was always tied behind, answered 
several purposes besides that of holding clothing 
together. In winter the mittens and sometimes 
the bullet-pouch occupied the front part of it. At 
the right side was hung the tomahawk and to the 
left the scalping knife in a leather sheath. In the 
bosom of his shirt a hunter stowed his luncheon of 
bread, cake, and jerk,^ as well as tow for wiping 
the rifle barrel. Without doubt Daniel longed for 
the day to come when he, too, might be a hunter 
and go forth clad like his father. 

But Squire Boone hunted only from necessity. 
He attended to his small farm, kept several looms 
busy weaving "homespun," and now and then made 
the welkin ring with the clink of anvil and ham- 
mer, for he had become a blacksmith also. In odd 
moments he mended and tinkered about the place, 
filled his pov/derhorn, and cleaned and poHshed his 
rifle, tasks which Daniel must have longed to do 
himself, if the saying is true that "childhood shows 
the man as morning shows the day." 

1 Smoked meat dried in the sun and cut into long slices or 
strips. 



1 8 DANIEL BOONE 

In pioneer times each family was obliged to do 
everything for themselves as well as they could. 
They were their own carpenters, tailors, tanners, 
cobblers, weavers, servants, butchers, bakers, and 
candlestick makers. So Daniel at an early age 
began to do his small share of a backwoodsman's 
work. He was taught to build a fire on the hearth 
with a huge ''back log" and a "fore stick," and to 
save the ashes for soft soap which every housewife 
made. He helped in the "truck patch" to raise 
corn, pumpkins, squashes, beans, and potatoes, 
which in the late summer and autumn were cooked 
with pork, venison, and bear meat. He learned 
the knack of grinding Indian corn for johnny-cake 
and mush, and of pounding grain into meal. He 
learned that firewood was generally cut in the early 
part of the winter and that by the first of April it 
should be hauled, chopped, and piled. Yet best of 
all were the lessons taught in the woods where he 
became familiar with trees, birds, and animals, and 
was shown how to set traps, to follow trails, and, 
above all, to conceal his own. 

Surely this more or less serious work was 
tempered with much mischief. Very likely Daniel 
often wandered too far into the woods and came 
home late to supper, or slipped away to go fishing 
and fell into the creek, much to his own shame and 



A PLUCKY BORDER BOY 19 

his mother's dismay. With the other children he 
may have made the httle cabin ring with merriment 
as the family sat at evening in the candle-light, 
Mrs. Boone making and mending garments, while 
Squire Boone deftly patched their moccasins with 
deerskin thongs. Whatever may have happened 
in his earliest years, we know that Daniel was a 
bright, healthy boy, and that it was his good fortune 
to have been born in poverty with the great out- 
of-doors as his playground. The surroundings and 
the playthings of his infancy and youth were the 
ones to fit him for his life work. 

When Daniel was ten years old, it was the custom, 
as it is to-day in certain country regions, to turn 
out the cows to pasture when spring was in the air 
and to let them remain until the late autumn. 
Accordingly, when the season came, Squire Boone's 
cows were driven from the homestead to a pasture 
some five miles distant, and with them went Daniel 
and his mother. All eagerly the barefooted, 
freckled urchin drove the cows down the lane and 
out into the road. None too soon could he get to 
the pasture and begin the long summer quite alone, 
save for his mother, with the herd and the wild 
creatures of the fields and woods. Mrs. Boone 
may have found less pleasure than Daniel in the 
annual departure, leaving behind her, as she did, 



20 DANIEL BOONE 

her husband and her other children. We know, 
however, that she was very devoted to Daniel, one 
historian referring to him as her ''favorite son," and 
probably her days in the pasture with him were a 
joy. 

They lived together in a tiny cabin, near which 
were a spring and dairy-house where Mrs. Boone 
busied herself making butter and cheese. It was 
Daniel's work to tend the cows. During those 
summer days he was out of bed at sunrise and ready 
to drive the cattle to pasture after their morning 
milking. He was expected to follow them hour on 
hour as they roamed about grazing, keeping with 
them, or at least within sound of the tinkling bells 
of their leaders. When late afternoon came, he 
drove them back again through the woods and 
clearing, and, after the evening milking, locked them 
securely in the pens. Such a life out-of-doors, with 
no work to keep mind and hands occupied, gave 
him opportunity to see for himself all the wa3^s 
of nature. He had ample time in which to watch 
and think and listen — to learn to walk through 
underbrush and thicket as silently as an Indian, to 
imitate the notes and calls of birds and animals, to 
tell the time of day by the sun's position in the sky, 
to find the points of compass by moss and bark, 
always thicker on the north side of tree trunks. 



A PLUCKY BORDER BOY 21 

to distinguish storm clouds, and predict weather 
from the wind. In the wide stillness, broken only 
by the crunch and nibbling of the cattle, the chim- 
ing of their bells, and the sounds of nature itself, 
Daniel became wise in the very knowledge which 
was to be so necessary to him as a pioneer. 

Even when Daniel was so young, his love of hunt- 
ing was evident. For long hours he lay in hiding, 
spying upon squirrels, birds, and chipmunks as they 
went about their secret business. His chief weapon 
was the root end of a young tree — gnarled, tough, 
and smoothly poHshed — which he trained himself 
to throw with exquisite skill. The days of this crude 
missile were numbered. When Daniel was twelve 
years old. Squire Boone gave his son a Hght rifle, and 
with such a possession Daniel, boylike, considered 
himself a full-fledged hunter. Quite forgetful of 
his duty as herdboy, he would wander far from the 
cows, intent only on his gun and the game which it 
would win for him ; and the cows sometimes strayed 
too far and were found only after much searching 
and calHng in the night. 

Daniel's parents were wise, and instead of punish- 
ing their boy for his neglect, they put his abihty to 
use and commissioned him to supply the meat for 
their table. Nothing could have made Daniel 
happier. As each summer passed and the cows 



22 DANIEL BOONE 

were driven back to the homestead, Daniel began a 
long winter of hunting. Over mountains, along 
valleys, across streams, he roved as pleased him best 
in ail kinds of wind and weather, learning secrets 
in the snow which nature could not teach him in 
summer. The game which he killed he cured for 
the family, and the skins he carried to Philadelphia, 
some fifty miles east of Oley, where he saw a bit of 
the world — as his father had when a boy — and 
there sold them for hunting supplies. When he 
was not busy either as herdboy or hunter, he turned 
blacksmith. Yet in iron work, as in all else, his in- 
stinct for hunting revealed itself. His chief skill 
lay in the making and mending of guns and traps. 

In those frontier days, boys and girls received 
little training from school-teachers. When they 
did attend school they sat upon wooden benches 
in a little log hut, and had lessons in the spelling- 
book and Psalter, and in writing and arithmetic. 
As far as we know, Daniel received no regular 
schooling, although some historians say that he 
attended a 'Afield" school taught by an Irishman for 
whom he had little respect and upon whom he 
played various unusual pranks. He gained his 
first knowledge of nature from his father, as he 
followed him about the farm or went with him into 
the woods, increasing this knowledge later on by his 



A PLUCKY BORDER BOY 23 

wanderings alone. In the dusk of summer evenings 
in the pasture, as Daniel and his mother sat to- 
gether, doubtless he reported his adventures and 
discoveries of the day, and Mrs. Boone, being an 
intelligent woman, discussed them with him. Very 
likely from these simple stories of nature she taught 
Daniel the great principles of human life as only a 
mother can. 

When Daniel was fourteen years old, his brother 
Samuel married Sarah Day, a Quakeress of more 
than ordinary attainments, and, being interested in 
her young brother-in-law, she taught him to read, 
write, and cipher. To her and to his mother Daniel 
owed his early education. With their training, 
*'he could read understandingly, do rough sur- 
veying, keep notes of his work, and write a sensible 
though badly-spelled letter." 

Nowadays girls and boys of fourteen are usually 
ready to graduate from the grammar school. How 
different it was with Daniel ! Of book knowledge 
he had had only the first lessons. Yet he could 
trap the bear and beaver ; he could bring down the 
wild cat and the panther. The secrets of green 
things and of all creatures living in the countryside 
through which he roamed were plain to him, and he 
knew also the best use of the loom, the anvil, and 
the hammer. 



24 DANIEL BOONE 

Frequently during these years of growing up, 
Daniel saw Indians. The red men of Pennsylvania 
often came to the border settlements and even went 
into the towns, and their errands were always 
friendly. William Penn had pledged them his 
faith when he came to their country, and they in 
turn had promised to "live in love with him and his 
children as long as the moon and the sun shall 
endure." Those simple words, uttered under a 
wide-spreading elm near Philadelphia, remained 
words of unbroken faith as long as the Quakers held 
control in the province. Daniel used to catch 
glimpses of them now and then, as they stole out of 
the woods and along the roads to trade or purchase 
supplies. He watched their quick manner, their 
sharp eyes, their impassive faces. When their 
business was over, he saw them return and disap- 
pear among the trees as silently as they had come, 
and it is no wonder that to him they were strange 
and fascinating men. Certain of them became 
converted to Christianity by a Moravian mission- 
ary, and held a meeting in Squire Boone's barn. A 
wonderful gathering it must have seemed to Daniel 
— the savages in their picturesque costumes, the 
missionary from far-away, and the Quaker neigh- 
bors, all joining in the simple service. 

These frequent glimpses of Indians and his knowl- 



A PLUCKY BORDER BOY 25 

edge of their characteristics served him well in later 
years, but at that time they filled him with curiosity. 
The Indians came from far parts of the forest, parts 
which he did not know, and he longed to make his 
way thither and to see for himself the real wilderness 
beyond civilization. He determined that some day 
he would satisfy this desire — and he did. 



CHAPTER IV 

The Journey to the Yadkin 

Daniel's life in Oley passed happily and unevent- 
fully until he was sixteen years old. Then, for some 
good reason which history has failed to record, 
Squire Boone decided to sell his lands and certain 
of his stock, and move southward into the valley of 
the Yadkin River in North Carolina. 

By this time there were eleven children in the 
Boone household — Sarah, Israel, Samuel, Jon- 
athan, Elizabeth, Daniel, Mary, George, Edward, 
Squire, and Hannah — and their father may have 
feared that the younger of them would fail to find 
good homesteads in the province, since much of 
the choice land of eastern Pennsylvania had already 
been settled. Perhaps the appearance in the region 
of many unusual immigrants of strange faiths, such 
as the Mennonites, Dunkards, and Schwenkfelders, 
made Squire Boone long for more freedom and the 
isolation so dear to backwoodsmen. Perhaps his 
relation with the Quakers, by no means a happy 
one, made a move seem desirable. It is recorded 
that various members of the Boone family were 

26 



THE JOURNEY TO THE YADKIN 27 

*' sometimes rather too belligerent and self-willed" 
and had "occasionally to be dealt with by the meet- 
ing." His daughter Sarah and his son Israel mar- 
ried "worldlings," or those outside the faith, and 
were "disowned" by the Society of Friends. Later 
Squire himself was "disowned" because he looked 
approvingly upon these acts of his children. What- 
ever finally persuaded him to leave Oley really 
matters little. The importance of the event lies 
in the change it wrought in Daniel's life and in the 
opportunities for development which it gave him. 
Squire Boone could but choose to travel south- 
ward, if he desired good farm land and hunting- 
ground. To the west of the border settlements in 
Pennsylvania lay the Alleghany Mountains, extend- 
ing north and south across the province and as far 
south as Georgia, a barrier to westward emigration. 
To the south, however, were many deep and fertile 
valleys between the Blue Ridge and the Alleghanies, 
and these were easily accessible to those who had the 
hardihood to endure long journeys and the usual 
privations of pioneering. Land was to be had for 
" taking up," as the old saying went, or for building 
and planting. Sometimes early settlers claimed 
land by "tomahawk right," an inferior kind of 
land-title secured by deadening a few trees near a 
spring or by cutting on them the initials of the 



28 DANIEL BOONE 

claimant. Such vague registry of property rights, 
even if assured by a warrant, naturally provoked 
many quarrels, as *' tomahawk rights" were often 
coveted and could be transferred, one lad, it is 
said, selling two hundred choice acres for "a cow 
and calf and a wool hat." 

Long years before, in 1666, to be exact, an emigra- 
tion agent of London issued a brief description of 
the province of Carolina, setting forth therein ^'the 
Healthfulness of the Air, the Fertility of the Earth 
and Water, and the great Pleasure and Profit to 
accrue to those that shall go thither to enjoy the 
same." 

The many Irish, German, and Quaker settlers of 
Pennsylvania, who began about 1732 to push their 
way through Maryland and Virginia to the upper 
waters of the Yadkin River in the northwest section 
of North Carolina, described this southern country 
with equal enthusiasm. The climate there proved 
mild and the country beautiful. The soil yielded 
quickly to cultivation and bore fruitfully, and game 
was abundant. Indian depredations at that time 
were infrequent, as the Catawbas and Cherokees 
came to the settlements seeking trade, and the hostile 
Shawnees seldom raided the valley. The reports 
which drifted back to Oley proved irresistible to a 
man like Squire Boone, who still retained the spirit 



THE JOURNEY TO THE YADKIN 29 

of adventure which had brought him as a boy across 
the sea, and eventually the decision to move south 
was made. 

In the spring of 1750, probably in the month of 
April, the Boones were ready for the exodus. The 
women and children were stowed in canvas-covered 
wagons stocked with necessities for a journey of 
five hundred miles, and the men and boys kept 
guard on horseback and drove the cattle. Slowly 
the little caravan wound its way along the familiar 
fields and woods and out of Oley Township, a sad 
and yet a happy train, and the new life was begun. 

Their course lay southward through Pennsyl- 
vania to the Potomac River and Harper's Ferry, and 
thence up the picturesque valley of the Shenandoah. 
At night they pitched camp, rounded up the 
animals, hobbled the horses, built a great fire, and 
sat about it for supper and the evening's rest ; and, 
when bedtime came, they placed a watch against 
Indians and wild beasts. By day they journeyed 
slowly on, and all the time Daniel was the party's 
scout and hunter. It was his duty to supply fresh 
meat, and, after he had selected the easiest course 
for the wagons, to pilot the party through the 
unknown regions before them. Such responsibility 
was excellent discipline as well as genuine pleasure 
for a lad like Daniel. 



30 DANIEL BOONE 

He thoroughly explored the woods, searched them 
for firm and level ground, and chose good halting- 
places, if possible near water and pasturage. Many 
hills he climbed for a distant view, and many deep, 
dark gorges he penetrated, always curious and 
always learning. On the way he fished for trout in 
the cool streams, saw and brought down game in 
plenty, and in their season picked medlars, mulber- 
ries, and wild cherries for his mother, who probably 
superintended the cooking for the hungry caravan. 
Unfortunately, few details of the journey have been 
preserved ; yet we do know that the family lingered 
long on the way from sheer enjoyment of the 
country. 

At length, in the autumn of 175 1, the Boone fam- 
ily passed along the valley of Virginia into Davie 
County, North Carolina, where the plain between 
the Yadkin and the Catawba rivers seemed to 
promise all that pioneers could ask. Squire Boone 
considered the region carefully, and, relying on the 
experience of many years of farming, selected a claim 
at Buffalo Lick, where Dutchman's Creek flows into 
the North Yadkin, a few miles from the present site 
of Wilkesboro. 

Even to-day in various parts of North Carolina 
there is excellent hunting, but in those times the 
valley of the Yadkin was wholly untamed, and large 



THE JOURNEY TO THE YADKIN 31 

numbers of animals came from the plain and from 
the mountain range to the westward to lick the salt 
deposited at its salt-springs. The work of clearing 
the land and of building cabins for Squire Boone and 
for his married children and relatives who had left 
Oley, began at once, Daniel doing his share of work 
of all kinds. Soon the pungent odor of hearth 
fires was wafted down the valley, and the usual 
pursuits of Oley were renewed. 

By this time Daniel was a lad of eighteen, grown 
to be five feet and ten inches tall, a slender, sinewy 
youth, always bound for the woods when he was 
not needed on the farm. All things seemed to help 
him in the roving life which he loved best. The 
Yadkin region proved to be all that reports had 
pictured it. Bears, buffaloes, deer, and elk ; wild- 
cats, foxes, panthers, wolves ; otters, muskrats, and 
beavers; even wild turkeys and, in the "little 
winter" as the late fall was called, wild geese, ducks, 
teals, and widgeons, were abundant. Was it not 
indeed a hunter's paradise ? 

Daniel soon learned that he could earn more 
money as a hunter than as a farmer or blacksmith, 
there being a constant demand for skins in Salis- 
bury, a market-place some twenty miles away, 
which carried on a brisk trade with towns on the 
coast. The buying and selling of fur was so lucra- 



32 DANIEL BOONE 

tive a business that many engaged in it. The family 
appreciated Daniel's ability, and little by little re- 
leased him from farm duties so that he was free to 
hunt. 

But Daniel was not always in the forest. A few 
years before the Boones had settled in North 
Carolina, a Scotch-Irish family named Bryan had 
journeyed from Pennsylvania in search of a less 
crowded district and had settled at the forks of 
the Yadkin River. They estabHshed themselves 
according to border fashion and were well able to 
welcome the Boones when they settled in the val- 
ley. Among the children there was a daughter 
Rebecca, a black-eyed, rosy-cheeked girl, with whom 
Daniel fell in love almost at first sight. Happy 
times they had together, as border young folks 
were by no means slow or stupid. There were 
weddings, housewarmings, excursions for nuts and 
berries, picnics, and gatherings on long winter 
evenings, when stories were told and songs were 
sung around the fire. For the boys there were 
sports in plenty — shooting, running, wrestling, 
jumping, throwing the tomahawk, and feats of 
strength and skill — and for all there was dancing 
to a fiddle. When Rebecca was but fifteen, she 
gave her promise to Daniel, and their troth was 
plighted. 



CHAPTER V 
Campaigning with Braddock 

For three years Daniel lived a hunter's carefree 
life, and all was well. Then suddenly this joyful, 
irresponsible existence came to an end, youth was 
over, and the duties and problems of manhood 
confronted him. A war was imminent — one 
phase of the long war between the French and Eng- 
lish for the supremacy of the continent ; and Daniel, 
hearing of the impending conflict, was anxious to 
be up and fighting. 

After the English had founded the thirteen 
colonies between the sea and the Alleghany and 
Appalachian mountains, they explored but little 
of the land west of the mountain barrier. The 
French, from their stronghold in Canada, made 
their way through the interior of the country and 
down the Mississippi Valley, establishing forts 
at the most important points of their explorations 
and claiming all the land from the Alleghanies to the 
Rockies. The English finally realized that unless 
they took immediate action the heart of the country 
would be lost to them forever. 

D 33 



34 DANIEL BOONE 

Accordingly, a band of merchants and land 
speculators, known as the Ohio Land Company, 
planned a colony on the east bank of the upper 
Ohio River, and obtained a large grant from the 
king, together with the right to trafhc with the 
Indians in the vicinity. The French became 
aroused, claiming this land by right of discovery, 
and at once began to extend their line of forts south- 
ward. Certain Indian tribes, meanwhile, had 
accepted the friendship of the British, but other 
western Indians declared that neither French nor 
English had any rights west of the Alleghany Moun- 
tains. The friendship of the Indian nations was of 
the utmost importance, particularly to the French, 
as the subjects of Great Britain in America exceeded 
in number and power those of France. 

Governor Dinwiddle of Virginia decided to send a 
messenger to Venango, a new French fort in the 
disputed region, to order the French settlers there 
to disperse, and to v/arn the Indians to cease attack- 
ing the western frontier. The journey thither would 
be a perilous one, through at least three hundred 
miles of unbroken country and among hostile 
savages. A fearless surveyor of twenty-one, named 
George Washington, offered his services, but with 
misgiving lest his lack of a beard should go against 
him. The governor, however, did not ask his age, 



CAMPAIGNING WITH BRADDOCK 35 

thanked him for "a noble youth," and commis- 
sioned him with the trust. With the aid of an 
interpreter and two servants, Washington coura- 
geously made his way to the French commander 
whose answer to the English was nothing more nor 
less than a challenge. The French seized and 
completed a fort on the Ohio, which the Ohio Com- 
pany had begun, and named it Fort Duquesne, and 
hostilities increased. In 1755, England sent over 
General Edward Braddock and two regiments to 
aid the colonists in driving out their enemy in the 
west, and a call for volunteers spread through the 
settlements. 

Daniel Boone enlisted early. Bidding Rebecca 
and his family a brave good-by, he joined the one 
hundred backwoodsmen of North Carolina, under 
command of Captain Edward B. Dobbs, son of the 
governor of the province, and proceeded by forced 
marches to join Braddock's army for service against 
Fort Duquesne at the forks of the Ohio, where 
Pittsburgh stands to-day. Daniel was just turned 
twenty-one and was probably the youngest man 
from North Carolina. The whole force for the 
expedition was gathered at Will's Creek, in western 
Maryland, at an old trading-station, situated on a 
slight eminence overlooking the Potomac River and 
re-named Fort Cumberland. All about this small 



36 DANIEL BOONE 

clearing lay the woods, boundless and unbroken 
save for the tiny trail to the Ohio which Washington 
had blazed two years before. The army here en- 
camped must have been a thrilling sight for Daniel 
whose life for the most part had been spent with 
relatives or in solitude. 

The two English regiments had been recruited 
till they numbered seven hundred men each. There 
were also a detachment of marines ; four hundred 
and fifty picked marksmen from Virginia, George 
Washington in command; volunteers from New 
York, Maryland, and the Carolinas, who. General 
Braddock rather contemptuously said, must be 
drilled to make them ''as much like soldiers as 
possible," and a band of fifty Indians, who served 
as scouts and who seemed astonishing objects to the 
royal troops. ''In the day," wrote one English 
officer, "the Indians are in our camp, and in the 
night they go into their own, where they dance 
and make a most horrible noise." Altogether the 
forces numbered about twenty-two hundred. 

Imagine the scene as it looked to Daniel — the 
little fort set in the wilderness, its garrison of motley 
men, the red coats of the British soldiers, the blue 
uniforms of the Virginians, the Indians gay with 
war-paint and feathered scalp-lock, the woods 
resounding with drum and fife, and in the air the 



CAMPAIGNING WITH BRADDOCK 37 

excitement of a campaign. Yet when he took his 
place in this strange company, it proved a very- 
humble one. He was separated from his North 
CaroHna comrades and saw them precede him in the 
line of march. Because he had some knowledge of 
blacksmithing, he was ordered to come up in the 
rear with the pack horses, wagons, and cannon, as a 
mechanic. Probably Daniel was greatly disap- 
pointed with so dull and menial a place, and viewed 
the long procession of genuine fighting men with an 
aching heart. Yet, as is often the way in Hfe, the 
undesired post proved the best and happiest all told. 

On June 10, 1755, three hundred axmen led the 
way from Fort Cumberland northward into Pennsyl- 
vania, felling trees and clearing a road, while the 
troops marched on each side through the woods, 
certain squads doing flanking and scout duty. The 
progress was slow, unnecessarily slow, according to 
George Washington, who served on the general's 
staff. The entire distance between Fort Cumber- 
land and Fort Duquesne was but eighty miles, 
yet not until July 9 did they come within range 
of the French fort. 

This month on the way proved a busy one for 
Daniel. When encamped at night, the line of 
wagons compactly drawn together was half a mile 
long, and the horses numbered about six hundred 



38 DANIEL BOONE 

besides those of the artillery. The old Indian path, 
which the road-makers followed wherever possible, 
was exceedingly bad both for animals and wagons. 
On high ground it was often so rugged that wagons 
were wrecked or rendered temporarily useless; 
in the ravines they sunk to the axles in mire. The 
horses, for the most part weak and crippled animals 
foisted on Braddock by dishonest contractors, 
became weakened with only leaves as fodder, there 
being no grass for them, arid they were often unable 
to haul the wagons. For Daniel, in such a state 
of affairs at the end of the line of march, there was 
constant work and continual demand for all his 
knowledge as a blacksmith. 

The hours which he spent in mending, riveting, 
and shoeing for the train, and in trudging along the 
uneven way of the wilderness, gave him many 
opportunities to become acquainted with his asso- 
ciates and to hear their experiences in strange parts 
of the country. The tales of hunters and traders 
were by far the most interesting to him, and of 
all story-tellers a certain John Finley won his 
greatest admiration. 

This young Scotch-Irishman had emigrated to 
Pennsylvania, and as early as 1752 had become a 
fur-trader, pushing westward to barter with the 
Indians in the Ohio Valley. He had penetrated 



CAMPAIGNING WITH BRADDOCK 39 

even farther west — into that paradise which the 
Indians called Kentucky and which he said they 
considered so precious a hunting-ground that the 
different tribes fought for it jealously. Beyond 
the Alleghanies, according to Finley, lay a land far 
richer in soil and game than the Yadkin region which 
Daniel knew and loved. Moreover, Finley was 
sHghtly familiar with the ways thither, one from 
North Carolina over an Indian trail to Cumberland 
Gap, and another down the Ohio by canoe to a 
stream named Kentucky. 

To the tales of such a paradise Daniel listened 
with wonder and delight. The old desire to pene- 
trate beyond civiHzation became stronger than 
ever as he listened to Finley, and he determined 
that as soon as possible he, too, would know Ken- 
tucky. The comrades — for Daniel Boone and 
John Finley became fast friends at once — even 
planned to go together to that delectable land, 
perhaps down the Ohio by canoe, after Fort Du- 
quesne had fallen. Thus they talked and marched, 
all unconscious that Daniel's desire to reach Ken- 
tucky, which Finley's chance words had fired, 
would play an important part in the nation's 
history. 

On the July morning when the army expected 
to reach Fort Duquesne, Washington explained 



40 DANIEL BOONE 

the Indian mode of warfare to General Braddock, 
and begged to be allowed to fight the red men in 
their own manner. 

But Braddock, arrogant and ignorant of savage 
ways, exclaimed, *'High times! High times, in- 
deed, when a young buckskin can teach a British 
general how to fight ! " 

So Washington withdrew, and the troops marched 
on to fife and drum, in full uniform, bayonets fixed, 
flags flying. No scouts ranged the woods, no 
obstacle was feared, and the army proceeded ''as 
if in review in St. James's Park." 

Consternation fell upon the little French garrison 
and the Indians encamped at Fort Duquesne, when 
the approach of Braddock's spirited forces was 
announced. 

But the young French commandant, attired like 
a savage, an Indian neckplate about his neck for 
luck, rushed to the savages, crying, ''Come! Up 
and follow me!" and disappeared down the trail 
toward the British. 

Indians, Canadians, and French regulars, about 
eight hundred in all, sped after him, and between 
two and three o'clock that afternoon they hid 
themselves in the underbrush near the trail, as 
Braddock's men were seen approaching in the 
distance. 



CAMPAIGNING WITH BRADDOCK 41 

All unsuspectingly the gay troops came on. 
Suddenly a yell arose in the woods, followed by a 
deadly volley of bullets from all sides, and for a time 
Daniel Boone's dreams of exploration vanished. 
The royal troops knew nothing about fighting an 
enemy they could not see, and huddled together in 
little groups, not knowing what to do. The Vir- 
ginians, however, accustomed to Indian warfare, at 
once sought cover, and might have saved the day, 
if General Braddock, in his ignorance, had not 
ordered his troops to form for a charge. Their 
scarlet coats were thus made an open mark for the 
unseen savages, and the horror of the ensuing 
murder and pillage was indescribable. Yet in 
spite of this and Washington's warning to fight in 
open order. General Braddock continued for three 
hours to command his men to arrange themselves 
according to approved European tactics. The 
hiddei\ enemy meanwhile gleefully continued to 
pick off his men, and General Braddock himself 
was mortally wounded early in the action. 

Just before he died in the strange wilderness, 
he said pathetically, ''Who would have thought 
it ? We shall know better how to deal with them 
another time." 

Washington buried him in the new-made road, 
and to save his body from discovery and scalping, 



42 



DANIEL BOONE 



he ordered the retreating wagons to drive over the 
grave. 

Late in the afternoon a retreat was ordered, and 
the survivors, panic-stricken, fled back toward the 
protection of Fort Cumberland, leaving Fort 
Duquesne still in the possession of the French. 
Among those fleeing for their lives was Daniel 
Boone, riding one of the wagon horses whose traces 
he had cut. 

Thus Daniel's dreams of prowess and of victory 
in his first campaign came to a sorry end, and, as 
suddenly, in the melee he lost sight of John Finley. 
Probably he made his way back to the Yadkin 
Valley with much chagrin in his heart. Such a 
homecoming to a devoted family and a sweetheart 
cast little glory upon a young man famed as a 
fearless scout and hunter. Yet the campaign, in 
spite of defeat, had not been vain for Daniel. 

The vision of Kentucky, as he had seen it through 
the eyes of John Finley, lingered — a vision to be 
an inspiration for years to come. 



CHAPTER VI 

A Pioneer Wedding 

It is never an easy matter to leave home and go 
out into a strange world to seek one's fortune. 
Such an exile as Daniel contemplated,, in a wilder- 
ness inhabited only by savages and wild animals 
and reached by uncertain routes, could not be 
undertaken Hghtly, and it is Httle wonder that 
twelve years passed after the embarrassing defeat at 
Fort Duquesne before Daniel turned his face toward 
Kentucky. It must also be confessed that his 
first enthusiasm for exploration had been somewhat 
checked by his mortifying experiences with Brad- 
dock's army, and that in consequence he worked 
with unusual interest upon his father's farm. De- 
spite the Indian raids to which Southern borderers 
were exposed after the repulse of the colonial 
force, the settlers in the Yadkin Valley continued 
to pursue their pastoral Kfe with customary dih- 
gence. Besides these influences, inclining Daniel 
to remain at home, there was his love for Rebecca 
Bryan, a power which bound him fast and joyfully 
to the Yadkin Valley. 

43 



44 DANIEL BOONE 

In the spring of 1756, following DanieFs return 
from the army, they were married. Squire Boone, 
as justice of the peace for Rowan County, per- 
formed the ceremony. Tradition pictures the 
bride and groom in glowing colors. 

''Behold that young man,'^ a border historian 
says, "exhibiting such unusual firmness and energy 
of character, five feet eight inches in height, with 
broad chest and shoulders, his form gradually 
tapering downward to his extremities; his hair 
moderately black; blue eyes arched with yellow- 
ish eyebrows; his lips thin, with a mouth pecu- 
liarly wide ; a countenance fair and ruddy, with 
a nose a little bordering on the Roman order. 
Such was Daniel Boone, now past twenty-one, 
presenting altogether a noble, manly appearance. 

"Rebecca Bryan," quaintly continues the writer, 
"whose brow had now been fanned by the breezes 
of seventeen summers, was, like the Rebecca of old, 
^very fair to look upon,' with jet-black hair and 
eyes, complexion rather dark, and something over 
the common size of her sex ; her whole demeanor 
expressive of her childlike artlessness, pleasing in 
her address, and unaffectedly kind in her deport- 
ment. Never was there a more gentle, affectionate, 
forbearing creature than this same youthful bride 
of the Yadkin." 



A PIONEER WEDDING 45 

Frontier weddings were prolonged and boisterous. 
On the nuptial morning the bridegroom's attendants 
gathered early at his house in order that they might 
reach the bride by noon, the usual time for cele- 
brating the ceremony, which, according to custom, 
took place before dinner. The men, dressed in 
linsey hunting-shirts, leather breeches, leggings, 
and moccasins, all homemade, accompanied the 
young women of the wedding party. They also 
wore homemade clothes, linsey petticoats and linsey 
or linen bed-gowns, and coarse shoes and stockings. 
All rode on horseback, generally in double file, 
although the narrowness of the trails often made 
this difficult. Sometimes disgruntled neighbors, 
vexed perhaps because they were not invited to 
the marriage, increased the difficulties of the march 
by draping grapevines or felling trees across the 
way or by startling the horses and riders with shots 
from ambush. Border young people were accus- 
tomed to obstacles ; from infancy they were trained 
to expect them and to surmount them. The 
wedding party, having quieted the horses and 
calmed any of the girls who chanced to become 
excited, usually cleared the path and proceeded 
merrily. 

At the close of the ceremony, solemnity vanished ; 
the young couple was congratulated and feted; 



46 DANIEL BOONE 

and the frolic, long anticipated in the neighborhood, 
was joined in by all except the bride's relatives who 
were busy with the cooking. No wedding without 
a dinner in those days ! The feast followed the 
ceremony as soon as it could be placed upon the 
table, which often was merely a large slab of rough 
timber set for the occasion with pewter plates and 
spoons, wooden trenchers and bowls, and knives 
and forks of bone. It was a substantial meal — 
beef, pork, fowl, and sometimes bear meat and 
venison, roasted and boiled, with potatoes, cabbage, 
and other vegetables. Appetites were keen and 
spirits merry, and all ate heartily — -all, perhaps, save 
the bride and groom who probably felt the serious- 
ness of the occasion more deeply than their hilarious 
guests. 

Soon after the substantial dinner, a musician 
struck up, couples laughingly took their places on 
the floor, the elders applauded, and dancing began. 
It was not the stately dancing of the colonial period 
as often pictured, but a far more rollicking amuse- 
ment. The figures were three- and four-handed 
reels or square sets, and jigs. Generally the dance 
began with a ''square four" which was followed by 
a jig or "jigging it off." Two of the four dancers 
of the square set ''singled out" for a jig, and the 
remaining pair followed them. When either couple 



A PIONEER WEDDING 47 

became tired, their places were taken by others, the 
dance thus sweeping on and on without interrup- 
tion, until the fiddler longed to rest. After this 
vigorous fashion the dancing continued until the 
following day. 

Daniel and Rebecca began their married life in 
a rough log cabin on Squire Boone's farm, but soon 
they acquired level land of their own lying on 
Sugar Tree, a tributary of Dutchman's Creek, in 
the Bryan settlement and only a few miles north 
of the elder Boone's. There they built a cabin 
which friends and relatives probably helped to 
"raise," according to the usual manner of settling 
a young couple among pioneers. 

Soon after the wedding day, a party of choppers 
felled trees and cut them into logs of proper lengths 
for the sides and ends of the building. Other 
woodsmen searched for straight-grained trees from 
three to four feet in diameter which could be split 
for clapboards for the roof. Smaller trees were 
hewn and their faces smoothed for puncheons for 
the floor. As a rule this lumber was prepared on 
the first day, and sometimes by that evening the 
foundation was laid . On the next day the " raising ' ' 
took place. The neighbors gathered early in the 
morning and at once chose four ''corner men" 
whose business it was to notch and place the logs. 



48 DANIEL BOONE 

The others handed them the timbers. Boards 
and puncheons were put in place for floor and roof, 
and generally by sunset a cabin stood in the clear- 
ing. A third day made it habitable. Masons 
daubed the chimney cracks with mortar, and car- 
penters made a door and a window, a table and 
stools, shelves for the dishes, wooden beds and 
wooden pegs. Then, before the young couple was 
allowed to move in, a housewarming was held in the 
new home ; this closed with an all-night dance at- 
tended by the relatives of the bride and groom and 
their neighbors. 

Daniel and Rebecca Boone began their married 
life in this wild and isolated region with only the 
barest necessities. Yet there was comfort in having 
their own cabin, however primitive it might appear, 
with its unhewn timbers chinked closely with moss 
and clay to keep out the frost, and suggesting the 
woodland even within the little house. There was 
pleasure in kindling their own fire on their own 
hearth, and in arranging their few possessions — 
the plain furniture, the dishes, the drinking mugs of 
gourds and hard-shelled squashes, the candle-sticks, 
the skins, Daniel's hunting trophies, his fowling- 
pieces and scalping-knives, the clothing and bedding, 
the scant sewing materials, the farming implements, 
the flitches of bacon, venison, and bear's meat. 



A PIONEER WEDDING 49 

Rebecca entered upon her housekeeping duties 
with diligence and thrift, and Daniel sowed and 
reaped, raised cattle and swine, hunted, served as 
smith and weaver, and occasionally drove to the 
market towns of the coast as master driver of one of 
the caravans which frequently journeyed thither to 
exchange furs for such indispensable articles as salt, 
iron, steel, castings, cloth, and manufactured goods. 

In these simple, industrious ways, and with few 
wants, Daniel and Rebecca made a meager living 
during their early married years. Save for the 
birth of two sons, whom they named James and 
Israel, life passed without especial events, until 
the spring of 1759, when the Cherokee Indians 
raided the Yadkin and Catawba valleys, and made 
the borderers tremble for their lives. The long- 
continued, friendly spirit of these savages for the 
colonists had come to an end. 

General James Oglethorpe had won the good will 
of the Cherokees in 1733 by purchasing from them a 
tract of land in Georgia to which he already had a 
royal title, but which formed part of the Cherokee 
territory, then extending through the western 
Carolinas, Georgia, and northern Alabama. The 
Indians believed that their forefathers had sprung 
from this ground or descended from the clouds 
upon the hills, and held sacred the places where 

£ 



50 DANIEL B(X)NE 

their venerable bones were buried. To show their 
appreciation, they gave General Oglethorpe a buffalo 
skin upon the inner side of which was painted the 
head and feathers of an eagle. "The feathers are 
soft," they said, "signifying love ; the skin is warm 
and is the emblem of protection; therefore love 
and protect our little families." They continued 
more or less loyal to the British for twenty years, 
considering the French "light as a feather, fickle 
as the wind, and deceitful as serpents." 

In 1755, the year of Daniel Boone's first cam- 
paign. Governor Glen of South Carolina asked per- 
mission to build two small forts in the Cherokee 
country for the purpose of counteracting French 
influence in the region and of holding fast to 
Cherokee good will and trade. 

The governor assured the Indians that the forts 
would be a retreat for them from their enemies, and 
in answer their chief said, "We freely surrender a 
part of our lands to the great king." 

A large tract was deeded to the English, and two 
forts erected, one on the Savannah River and 
another on the Tennessee River, and named Fort 
Prince George and Fort Loudon. Later a third 
fort was built a short distance from the South 
Fork of the Yadkin and called Fort Dobbs. These 
three places of refuge guarded the approach from 



A PIONEER WEDDING 51 

the southwest where the French and their Indian 
allies were especially active. 

These wooden forts differed greatly from the 
forts of to-day. They consisted of cabins, block- 
houses, and stockades, the cabins commonly forming 
one side of the fort, and all the buildings arranged 
in the form of a square or oblong. Sometimes 
bastions were built at the angles of the forts instead 
of blockhouses. The timbers were sharpened at 
the top, the walls were furnished with loopholes at 
proper heights and distances, and the outside made 
bullet-proof. The whole inclosure was built with- 
out nails or iron as these were not to be had. In 
the side nearest a spring was a strong gate, made of 
thick slabs, which could be heavily barred. Such 
forts could not have withstood artillery fire, but 
they served their purpose well in Indian warfare, 
the savages having no heavy guns. 

With the erection of the three forts the Cherokees 
were driven still farther westward. For some 
years they had been feeling the pressure of the 
growing colonies. They resented the presence of 
traders and hunters in their territory, but they had 
become so dependent upon the supplies of civiliza- 
tion — paint, ammunition, guns, knives, tools, and 
gewgaws — that they allowed the white men to 
come and go unmolested. 



52 DANIEL BOONE 

Farmers also annoyed them. Many raised live 
stock — cattle and sheep, hogs and horses — and 
turned them loose to roam and graze on the foot- 
hills of the Alleghanies. As the herds and crops 
increased with the development of the valleys, new 
pastures and land were needed, and little by little 
the settlers encroached upon the Indian hunting- 
grounds, driving cattle sometimes sixty or more 
miles from the settlement to fresher fields. The 
Cherokees and Catawbas were aware of this intru- 
sion, but they made no open protests until the year 
of Daniel's wedding. After the defeat of Fort 
Duquesne, in which they took part, mutual injuries 
brought about a state of hostility between the North 
Carolina settlers and their Cherokee neighbors. 

As the Cherokee warriors were passing through 
the extreme frontier settlements of Virginia on 
their return march from Braddock's campaign, they 
found the settlers' horses running wild in the woods, 
and these they appropriated to replace those they 
had lost on the expedition, not supposing them to 
belong to any individual in the province. It was 
customary among Indians and white men to claim 
wild horses. When the Cherokees appropriated the 
horses of the settlers, some Virginians, without 
waiting for legal redress, attacked and killed twelve 
or more of the warriors and took others prisoners. 



A PIONEER WEDDING 53 

As soon as the Cherokees reached their villages 
they told of this ungrateful return for their support, 
and the young braves vowed vengeance, which 
the French emissaries were glad to foster. 

With bodies and faces grotesquely painted, and 
with feathers quivering in their scalp locks, they 
descended upon the settlements in the Carolinas 
which had hitherto been prospering, and forced 
their way ruthlessly along the river valleys, creating 
havoc and terror, and attacking so suddenly that 
the settlers were unable to organize to withstand 
the assault. The border people knew all too well the 
horrors of Indian warfare, and the tortures of Indian 
captivity. Messengers were ever ready to warn 
settlers of the approach of enemies on the warpath 
and to order them into the forts. 

The dwellers in the Yadkin and Catawba valleys 
abandoned their farms and fled precipitately either 
to Fort Dobbs, to a smaller neighborhood inclosure, 
or to some settlement on the coast. Several of the 
Boone and Bryan families took refuge in Virginia 
and Maryland, Squire Boone and his wife hasten- 
ing to Georgetown, now in the District of Columbia. 
Daniel Boone with his family and a few possessions 
drove in a two-horse wagon to Culpeper County, 
eastern Virginia, and there settled. Womanlike, 
Rebecca probably thought sadly of the deserted 



54 DANIEL BOONE 

home on the bank of Sugar Tree, the home which 
she and Daniel had built and where her children had 
been born, but, although she was only twenty, she 
bore the flight and the new life in a manner worthy 
of her border heritage. Daniel again found em- 
ployment as a wagoner. The settlers in eastern 
Virginia raised tobacco, and this bulky commodity 
Daniel was hired to haul to Fredericksburg, the 
nearest market town. 

Hauling tobacco, however, was monotonous 
work for a pioneer hunter, and as he guided the 
creaking wagon along uneven roads, his thoughts 
were with his friends imprisoned in Fort Dobbs. 
Was it not his duty to fight with them the battles 
they were waging against a common foe ? 

This thought grew day by day, and finally he 
made up his mind. As soon as he could provide 
for the comfort of his young wife and infant sons, 
Daniel Boone hurried back to North Carolina and 
manfully took up his burden in the war. 



CHAPTER VII 

Fighting the Cherokees 

Boone found that during his absence Fort Dobbs 
had been besieged desperately by the Cherokees, 
but that its little garrison under Colonel Hugh 
Waddell, in which several Boones and Bryans had 
served, had successfully repulsed them. In fact, 
commissioners, appointed to consider the matter 
of fortifications and to report to the legislature of 
South Carolina, found "officers and soldiers appear- 
ing well and in good spirits" at Fort Dobbs at 
Christmas in 1756. Evidently Daniel's support 
was not needed there. 

Farther south matters were more serious. The 
Cherokees were arming anew, determined to avenge 
to the death the blood of their kindred. Even 
Atta-Kulla-Kulla, half-king of the nation, who had 
advocated peace to the last, appeared in war gear 
and with one side of his face painted red, the other 
black, and great white circles sketched around his 
eyes. In the vicinity of Fort Prince George on the 
Savannah River the Indians were particularly 
incensed, and Colonel Montgomery of the British 

55 



56 DANIEL BOONE 

army was instructed to organize an expedition 
to proceed against them and to the reHef of the 
garrison, suffering more for want of fuel, which 
they were unable to leave the fort to procure, 
than for want of provisions. 

In addition to Montgomery's twelve hundred 
regular troops — among whom were six hundred 
picturesque Highlanders in kilted uniform — he 
secured several hundred backwoodsmen of Carolina 
with some Indian allies, under the command of 
Colonel Waddell. Daniel enlisted at once with 
Waddell to whom his natural sagacity and knowl- 
edge of savages proved valuable. They marched 
with all haste to Fort Prince George, relieving it 
at once. Many Cherokee villages near the Ten- 
nessee and Keowee rivers were laid waste, and 
those Indians whom they did not kill or capture 
were reduced to starvation, as the white men 
wrought complete havoc, destroying not only the 
settlements but the crops and corn as well. Dead 
and dying Indians and blazing wigwams marked 
the lower country. Oconostota, known as ''Great 
Warrior," said that Montgomery's ''feet were 
winged with fire and destruction." 

Colonel Washington felt uncertain of the British 
commander's ultimate success. 

"What may be Montgomery's fate in the Chero- 



FIGHTING THE CHEROKEES 57 

kee country," he wrote Richard Washington, "I 
cannot readily determine. It seems he has made 
a prosperous beginning, having penetrated into the 
heart of the country, and he is now advancing his 
troops in high spirits to the relief of Fort Loudon. 
But let him be wary. He has a crafty, subtle 
enemy to deal with, that may give him the most 
trouble when he least expects it." 

Colonel Montgomery, however, elated with his 
progress, and unfamiliar with Indian valor, like 
most British officers, expected to be able to wipe 
out as easily the Cherokee villages on the Little 
Tennessee. 

Across the mountains he hastened his two 
thousand soldiers and train of cattle and other 
provisions necessary for so wild a journey, aiming 
to complete his mission with dispatch. But the 
Cherokees lay in hiding, longing to wreak their 
vengeance at an advantageous moment. Their 
spies kept a stealthy watch, and when Mont- 
gomery's forces came, one June morning, to a rough 
road — on one side the land dropping precipitately 
to a stream below, and on the other a sheer cliff 
rising — the signal was given, and six hundred 
warriors, bloodthirsty and exultant, opened fire 
upon the unsuspecting troops. For a while the 
colonial forces were too dazed to act. The trees 



$8 DANIEL BOONE 

and underbrush seemed aflame, and the hills re- 
sounded awfully to the savage war cries. Then the 
colonel, suffering from the experiences in which 
Braddock had lost his life, rallied his men and 
fought his way valiantly to level ground. For- 
tunately, the Cherokees were poor marksmen, 
and Waddell's rearguard of backwoodsmen, of 
whom Daniel was doubtless one, were trained 
Indian fighters. On this account the disaster was 
less terrible than Braddock's. 

Montgomery was forced to beat a retreat at 
great sacrifice. Throwing away many stores and 
bags of flour in order that the horses might carry 
back his wounded, he saved as many men as he 
could. The dead he weighted heavily and sunk 
in the streams that their bodies might not be 
recovered and scalped. Under nettling fire but 
with regularity, he made his way to Fort Prince 
George and thence, disgusted with Indian warfare 
and deaf to all entreaties, he and some of his regu- 
lars retired by sea to New York. Thus Daniel 
Boone experienced defeat a second time. 

Now that the British commander had been driven 
from their country, the Cherokees determined that 
they would take possession of Fort Loudon, claim- 
ing that they had paid for it with their blood shed 
in the English service. This outpost stood in the 



FIGHTING THE CHEROKEES 59 

very heart of their territory, one hundred and fifty 
miles from the nearest white settlement. The 
memory of their sacked villages, and their kindred 
who had perished in the flames, urged them on. 
They cut off the httle fort from communication 
and would have reduced the garrison to starva- 
tion if certain kindly squaws had not smuggled 
the soldiers lean stores. 

At length. Captain Stuart left the fort in full 
uniform, bearing a white flag in his hand, and 
treated with Chief Oconostota in Chote, ''the 
beloved town, city of refuge," of the Cherokee 
nation. There the Indians agreed that the garrison 
of Fort Loudon should march out unmolested to 
Virginia or Fort Prince George with their arms and 
drums, each soldier having as much powder and 
ball as necessary for the march and all the baggage 
they might choose to carry. Captain Smith prom- 
ised that the fort, the great guns, the powder, the 
bullets, and spare arms should be delivered to the 
Indians, without fraud or delay, on the day ap- 
pointed for the exodus. Great was the rejoicing 
when news of the terms reached the fort. The 
soldiers marched away, flags flying and uniforms 
making a gay showing in spite of defeat, the women, 
children, and sick soldiers riding behind on Indian 
ponies. Through the canebrakes and along the 



6o DANIEL BOONE 

trail in the dark woods the little garrison took its 
way, singing, and to the beat of drums. But, alas ! 
as the next dawn was tingeing the sky, the hideous 
din of war whoops broke the morning stillness, 
and seven hundred Cherokees, painted horribly, 
fell upon the band and without mercy killed or 
tortured them. 

Like many calamities, this treacherous massacre 
bore good fruit. It moved the colonial author- 
ities to understand that unless they took immedi- 
ate steps to subdue the Indians, the Indians would 
wipe out the outlying settlements of the colonies. 
Accordingly, during the winter of 1 761 , the governors 
of Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina 
agreed to unite their forces for a decisive invasion 
of the Cherokee country. The assembly of South 
Carolina voted a thousand men and £25 for every 
Indian scalp; North Carolina voted a similar 
provision and authorized the holding of Indian 
captives as slaves. 

By June two armies were marching away toward 
the west. One, composed chiefly of Scottish High- 
landers in plaids and kilts under a Highland colonel, 
James Grant, overcame the Indians near the place 
where Montgomery had been attacked the year 
before ; later they ravaged villages and crops, and 
drove several thousand Indian men and women to 



FIGHTING THE CHEROKEES 6i 

starve in the hills. The work of devastation was 
successful ; the Indians themselves could not have 
been more thorough. 

With the second army, composed of backwoods- 
men from Virginia and North Carolina, went Daniel 
Boone as fearless as ever and with the experience 
of two campaigns, two rather ill-fated campaigns 
to be sure, to his credit. But Daniel saw little 
fighting. The five hundred backwoodsmen of 
his North Carolina regiment, serving again under 
Waddell, were delayed along the way by their 
commander. Colonel William Byrd, in road-making. 
Later, Colonel Stephen succeeded Byrd, and the 
force pushed on quickly to Long Island in the Hol- 
ston River, where they overcame four hundred 
Cherokees, a defeat which gave the final blow 
to Cherokee supremacy. The savages, at last 
humbled, begged for peace. The North Carolina 
troops went home to enjoy the praise which they 
had justly won, and, although few details of 
Boone's campaigns remain, we are glad to believe 
that he participated in this victory and shared in 
all its honors. 

Atta-Kulla-Kulla and other chieftains met the 
lieutenant governor of South Carolina in council 
at Ashley Ferry in 1761, where the pipe of peace 
was lighted and smoked in great silence and solem- 



62 DANIEL BOONE 

nity. Then Atta-Kulla-Kulla rose and addressed 
the council, presenting strings of wampum from the 
different towns. 

"As to what has happened," he said, "I believe 
it has been ordered by our Father above. We are 
of a different color from the white people. They 
are superior to us. But one God is Father of all, 
and we hope what is past will be forgotten. God 
Almighty made all people. There is not a day but 
some are coming into, and others going out of, the 
world. The great king told me the path should 
never be crooked, but open for every one to pass 
and repass. As we all live in one land, I hope we 
shall all live as one people." 

Peace was soon officially declared, and the friend- 
ship, which the Cherokees had formerly promised, 
was renewed, all hoping that it would endure as 
long as "the rivers shall run, the mountains last, 
or the sun shine." 

With the submission of the Cherokees, the 
dreaded power of France in the New World also 
waned, and the end of the long French and Indian 
wars, of which these Southern conflicts had been a 
part, soon followed, leaving the country to the 
English. 

The struggle between red men and settlers had 
been long and inevitable. The Indians beheved 



FIGHTING THE CHEROKEES 63 

that the Great Spirit had given them their ancestral 
lands and that they had every right to hold them 
against all invaders. To them these lands repre- 
sented all that was dear — their homes, their 
hunting-grounds, the graves of their fathers. 

*'It was we," said the Delawares, Mohicans, and 
their kindred tribes, *'who so kindly received the 
Europeans on their first arrival into our own country. 
We took them by the hand and bade them welcome 
to sit down by our side, and live with us as brothers ; 
but how did they requite our kindness? They at 
first asked only for a little land, on which to raise 
bread for their families ; and pasture for their 
cattle, which we freely gave them. They saw the 
grass in the woods, which the Great Spirit had given 
us for our subsistence, and they wanted it, too. 
They penetrated into the woods in quest of game ; 
they discovered spots of land they also wanted, 
and because we were loath to part with it, as we 
saw they had already more than they had need of, 
they took it from us by force, and drove us to a 
great distance from our homes." 

To Daniel Boone and to all borderers, the Indians 
seemed mere savages, treacherous, bloodthirsty, 
barbaric in customs, and without ambition to 
develop either their lands or their lives. It went 
without saying that the white men were superior. 



64 DANIEL BOONE 

They felled forests, removed rocks and tree-trunks, 
tilled fields, bridged rivers, and made roadways. 
They believed in schools and churches, in law and 
order. The very territory, which the Indians had 
held for centuries without cultivation, meant 
opportunity and prosperity to Boone and his 
pioneer comrades. They coveted these lands — 
and they took them. Believing that the Indians 
must be fought with their own weapons, they 
battled with the red men, often according to the 
savages' own wild standards. Neither Indians 
nor settlers can be blamed ; each was fighting for 
a cause. The whole history of the frontier is a 
blood-stained story. 



CHAPTER VIII 

Exploring New Country 

Peace again in the valleys and among the foot- 
hills of Virginia and the Carohnas ! What a sigh 
of relief must have passed over the country when 
the Indians had smoked their pipe of friendship at 
Ashley Ferry in 1761 ! Now were the settlers free 
to return to their deserted cabins — if perchance 
they were still standing after the ravages of war — 
and to gather up again the threads of life which 
had snapped so suddenly two years before. By 
vehicle, and on foot and horseback, families made 
their way along familiar roads. Neighbors, who 
had lost sight of one another in the eastward flight, 
fell upon each other with rejoicing, and told sorry 
tales of want and suffering. Homes were again 
established, some sad for want of members whose 
spirits the Indians had "sent away over the great 
mountain pass." Fires were once more lighted on 
abandoned hearths ; springs and wells, overgrown 
with brush from long disuse, were cleared, and land 
turned to ripen in the sun. 
As soon as peace was assured, Daniel returned 
F 65 



66 DANIEL BOONE 

to Virginia, stowed his little family comfortably 
again in the two-horse wagon, and jogged back to 
the Yadkin Valley. Once more Rebecca was 
established in the region she loved, and Daniel 
went about his farm work and his hunting. Squire 
and Sarah Boone, then well along in years, rode on 
horseback from Maryland, doubtless over much 
the same route by which they had first journeyed 
from Pennsylvania. Many experiences were re- 
counted in which Daniel was the center of interest. 
This happy reunion was to be saddened three 
years later by the death of Squire Boone, a brave 
man greatly respected in the border country. 

Yet however pleasant home may have appeared 
to the Boones, the spirit of the old pioneer life was 
changed. Those who had known, the stirring 
dangers and uncertainties of war were restless in 
the settlements. With his love for the wilderness, 
Boone in particular found the humdrum life of a 
farmer little to his liking. Idleness of life within 
the forts had driven certain settlers to lawlessness. 
Such would creep out of the great, barred gate in 
secret to steal household possessions or live stock 
left on the abandoned farms when the owners fled 
before the Indians. When these evil-doers returned 
to the open country, they continued the bad habits 
formed during the wars, and horse-stealing became 



EXPLORING NEW COUNTRY 67 

prevalent. Unfortunately, all frontier people were 
not of strong moral character. Several bands of 
thieves established themselves in the hills over- 
hanging the Yadkin Valley, and, safe for a time 
within a log fort which they built, they boldly pil- 
laged the settlements, stealing whatever pleased 
them, even carrying away a young girl. This last 
act so aroused the borderers that, banding together 
under Daniel Boone, they attacked and captured 
the little fortress and carried off the culprits to 
Salisbury jail. 

Fighting the Cherokees in the western campaigns 
had shown the backwoodsmen of the South that the 
rich land, lying beyond their settlements, was far 
more accessible than they thought, and this stimu- 
lated their natural desire to hunt and explore. 
Boone, ever eager to be on the trail, and now doubly 
awakened to the charm of adventure, gladly as- 
sumed the leadership of exploring and hunting 
parties, whenever he did not prefer to hunt in soli- 
tude. As population increased, the game sought 
new haunts, and Daniel followed after, tramping 
the hills and valleys for miles around until he knew 
every nook and cranny, and even had become 
familiar with the view from peaks five and six 
thousand feet high. 

Many a time on an autumn morning, after the 



68 DANIEL BOONE 

leaves were well bedded, and rain or light snow 
had fallen, Boone stepped out early to look at the 
weather and to sniff the wind. Should he and his 
neighbors set off that day for the woods? Deer 
were hunted during the fall and early winter, but 
the season for bears and fur-skinned animals lasted 
through the winter and well into the spring. There 
is an old saying that fur is good during every month 
having the letter R in its name. 

In addition to their arms, hunters took with them 
if possible flour, salt, Indian meal, and blankets. 
In a spot sheltered from the north and west winds, 
they built a ''half -faced" cabin. This was a rude 
shelter having the back made of logs, the roofing 
of skins, blankets, strips of wood or bark, and the 
front open. Before this opening the men built 
their camp fire, cooked their meals, and told their 
evening stories. When bedtime came, they crept 
into the shelter to beds of dry leaves or evergreen 
boughs, and lay down with their feet toward the 
fire. With this warmth they hoped to prevent or 
cure rheumatism to which wet moccasins made 
them subject. 

Boone's skill and calculation in hunting rarely 
failed. A glance at the weather, and he reckoned 
where he should find his game during that day. He 
knew that deer seek sheltered places under the lee 



EXPLORING NEW COUNTRY 69 

of the hills in stormy weather, but that during 
rainy days with slight wind they keep in the open 
woods on the highest ground. To be sure that his 
game might not scent him, he ascertained the 
direction of the wind — perhaps by holding a 
moistened finger above his head — and then kept 
to the leeward of the animal he was trying to outwit. 
He seldom fired at random, but took his aim with 
deliberation and accuracy, as powder and lead were 
scarce and costly in the secluded settlements. 

When his little son James was seven or eight years 
old, Boone began to teach the lad to be a hunter. 
He took him on long tramps and told him hunter's 
secrets. Often they were absent several days at a 
time, hitting the trail together like old "pals." 
At night, however, when they were stretched in 
their blankets on the ground in "open" camp, with 
their feet toward the fire, the little boy lay in his 
father's arms, warm and well protected from the 
snow which sometimes overtook them. When a 
deer had been killed, James watched his father skin 
it and hang it high up on some tree out of the reach 
of wolves and bears. When the day's chase was 
over, he helped him shoulder the kill and carry it 
to camp, where they had supper and perhaps one 
of Boone's best stories. Then the lad placed their 
moccasins to dry at the fire — if Indians were 



70 DANIEL BOONE 

feared, they were hung on the rifles, ready at any 
instant — and he and his father fell asleep. As 
the child grew older, their hunting expeditions 
lasted longer — for two or three months sometimes 
— and their companionship deepened as they suf- 
fered together the dangers and privations of the 
woods and enjoyed its spoils. 

When Boone was twenty-six years old, he began 
in earnest the business of exploring for which he 
was to be famed. He threaded his way westward 
along the Watauga River, a wild but tempting 
region in Tennessee, where soon after an associa- 
tion of settlers from North Carolina and Virginia 
founded a community and adopted the first con- 
stitution west of the Alleghany Mountains. There 
also Daniel proved himself a successful hunter. 
Upon a beech tree, standing until a few years ago 
on the banks of a small stream emptying into the 
Watauga, now known as Boone's Creek, later 
explorers found this inscription, cut sharply in 
the bark with a hunting knife : 

D. Boone cilled A BAR on this tree year lydo. 

It is fortunate that in boyish fashion he cut his 
name and hunting exploits upon trees and rocks, 
as many such legends have helped to trace his 



EXPLORING NEW COUNTRY 71 

wanderings. From them it is evident that he was 
more familiar with rifles than with spelling books. 

A year later there crossed the mountains another 
hunting party in which ''came Daniel Boone from 
the Yadkin, in North Carolina, and traveled with 
them as low as the place where Abingdon now 
stands and there left them." Three years later, 
in 1764, he returned to the Tennessee country with 
another company of hunters in the employ of a 
party of land speculators. He was sent thither 
to reconnoiter and to report concerning the region 
about the Cumberland River. Big game was 
abundant there, and Daniel's love of the chase was 
fully satisfied. 

While looking down from a Cumberland moun- 
tain peak upon a herd of buffaloes grazing below, 
it is said that Boone exclaimed : ''I am richer than 
the man mentioned in Scripture, who owned the 
cattle on a thousand hills — I own the wild beasts 
of more than a thousand valleys!" 

In 1765, he abandoned western trails, and in 
September mounted his horse and rode away with 
seven companions through South Carolina and 
Georgia to Florida, then belonging to Spain. He 
had a notion of settHng there, and explored the 
country from St. Augustine to Pensacola. The 
journey was a dangerous one. Trails were miry, 



72 DANIEL BOONE 

everglades and almost impenetrable swamps 
blocked their way, and the cabins of pioneers, 
where they had planned to spend their nights, 
were far apart. In fact, they might have starved 
at one time, if certain roving Seminoles had not 
taken pity on them. In spite of his wretched expe- 
riences, however, Daniel was charmed with Pensa- 
cola, and purchased a house and lot there for 
himself. But when four months later he was once 
again at home, telling of the trials of the trip and 
of the beauties of the southern country, Rebecca 
would not listen to Boone's plan to move. Should 
she allow her husband, of all men a hunter by 
nature, to settle in a country almost gameless save 
for weeping alligators? Consequently the Florida 
scheme was abandoned, and fortunate it seems, 
for Boone would never have played so important 
a part in American history if he had settled in the 
far south where land to the west was bounded by 
the Gulf of Mexico instead of by a wilderness to 
be conquered. 

Wherever his explorations led him, Daniel noticed 
that game trails always retreated from the settle- 
ments and always led to the west. As he pursued 
them, visions recurred to him — the visions which 
John Finley had awakened, as he mended and 
hammered for the ill-fated Braddock. To the 



EXPLORING NEW COUNTRY 73 

west, according to Finley, lay Kentucky, a paradise 
for game. Perhaps the big game of North Carolina 
was wending its way there, now that its old haunts 
had been molested. Perhaps it was drawn, as if 
by magic, to that region said to be the wildest 
and richest in all the continent. The Indians valued 
it; it was the common hunting-ground of the 
Creeks, Cherokees, and Choctaws of the South, and 
the Shawnees, Delawares, and Wyandots of the 
North. Was not the time come at last for Boone 
to see Kentucky for himself ? 

Life in those days in North Carolina was not 
entirely happy, and if Kentucky soil should prove 
richer than his own valley, it would be well to move 
thither. With the increase in the number of 
hunters and in the area of cleared land, Boone was 
obliged to make long excursions in order to find 
game large enough to please him. Customs in 
North Carolina were also changing and becoming 
extravagant. Scotch adventurers had come to 
the province to make money through trade, and 
the well-to-do people soon appeared in clothes 
made of imported goods. Homemade articles 
found little favor, and manual labor, which pre- 
viously had been deemed worthy, was relegated 
to slaves. Consequently, those who wished to live 
frugally and save for "a, rainy day" were scorned. 



74 DANIEL BOONE 

Boone hated pretension and luxury. To him they 
seemed effeminate, and it is no wonder that he 
looked forward with eagerness to that uncivilized 
region called Kentucky. The rascality of the land 
agent of whom the Boones had bought their lands, 
proved another thorn in the flesh. The previous 
owner, Earl Granville, demanded new deeds for 
which large fees were charged, claiming flaws in the 
land titles. In protest Boone had already moved 
three times since his return to Sugar Tree, each 
time going farther from the settlements, until he 
finally built in the foothills of the Alleghanies, 
where there was game in plenty and excellent 
ranges for his live stock. He chose his home on the 
Upper Yadkin near Holman's Ford, in a little 
horseshoe-shaped swamp and canebrake surround- 
ing a ridge. 

At length, in the autumn of 1767, his mind was 
made up, and he set out for Kentucky with a 
special friend, William Hill, and probably with 
Squire Boone, his brother, also. They crossed the 
mountains and came down into the valleys of the 
Hols ton and Clinch rivers, made their way to the 
West Fork of the Big Sandy, and thence followed 
the river down for a hundred miles, trying to find 
the Ohio River, until they came to a buffalo path 
which led them to a salt lick near the present site 



EXPLORING NEW COUNTRY 75 

of Prestonburg in eastern Kentucky. There they 
were snow-bound and forced to camp for the winter. 
Little did the travelers dream that they were 
already in the paradise for which they searched, 
although game of all kinds was so abundant and 
came in such great numbers to the hck, that their 
winter's hunting proved most profitable. 

When spring came and the snow had melted, 
they attempted to travel farther westward, but 
briers made exploring so difficult that Daniel 
decided it would be impossible to reach Kentucky 
as they had planned, by way of the Ohio River to 
the Falls. So the expedition was abandoned, and 
the little party re-crossed the mountains and de- 
scended into their own valleys, happy with the 
success of their winter's hunt. 

As Boone wound his way home, was he laying 
plans for a future trip to Kentucky? We do not 
know. Perhaps he would have been satisfied with 
this attempt, if a peddler's wagon had not jogged 
into the Upper Yadkin Valley about that time, and 
the owner appeared at Daniel's own door to tempt 
Rebecca with his wares. 

That peddler proved to be John Finley, the light- 
hearted, venturesome comrade of Braddock's road, 
the lover of Kentucky ! 



CHAPTER IX 
Among Hostile Indians 

Exciting days followed in the Boone cabin on 
the river bluff. Finley again inspired Daniel with 
his old enthusiasm, and once more they pledged 
themselves to explore Kentucky together. Absorb- 
ing plans were made by the winter fireside, for 
Finley remained as Daniel's guest until spring, 
having come to the valley too late in the year for 
them to begin at once their march across the 
mountains. 

Boone's friends were as discontented with the 
changed conditions in the settlements as Daniel 
himself, and it was easy for him and for the jovial 
Finley to persuade four of them to join an expedi- 
tion to Kentucky, which Finley would lead, by way 
of Cumberland Gap, into the delectable land of 
forests and canebrakes, of elk, deer, and buffaloes. 

Finally the spring crops had been planted and the 
necessary outfit for the journey was ready — the 
deerskin garb, the arms, rifle, hunting-knife, toma- 
hawk, bullet-pouch, and powderhorn; the two 
horses, one for Boone to ride and the other to bear 

76 



AMONG HOSTILE INDIANS 77 

the pack saddle, with its little store of provisions, a 
bearskin blanket, and camp-kettle strapped on 
behind. Boone, together with Finley and the Yad- 
kin settlers, who were to serve as hunters and camp 
keepers, bade good-by to those they loved, and 
turned their horses toward the great wilderness 
which they hoped to conquer. 

It was a sad day. Although Daniel loved the 
free life of the open, he was devotedly fond of his 
family and home, and this exile meant long 
separation and perhaps death. Life has many 
uncertainties, and the westward trail was perilous 
indeed. As he rode away, he at least found comfort 
in the thought that during his absence his wife and 
children would not want. As Rebecca was an 
excellent manager, he could rely on her ability to 
direct the small farm, which James and Israel 
would help to carry on. His wife would also have 
the aid of Daniel's brother Squire, who remained 
at home to harvest his own and Daniel's crops. He 
was to follow the trail to Kentucky later, with fresh 
horses and ammunition, A picturesque little 
cavalcade they made on that bright spring morning 
so long ago — six strong and fearless hunters, 
dressed in their quaint deerskins and riding reso- 
lutely away to a doubtful land. Rebecca stood 
with the children and waved them out of sight, in 



78 DANIEL BOONE 

spite of tears. Like all great undertakings, this 
western journey demanded sacrifices of every one 
concerned. 

Many years later, Boone told the story of his 
conquest of the wilderness to John Filson, the first 
historian of Kentucky, who unfortunately wrote it 
down in his own formal style instead of in Daniel's 
simple language. 

*'It was on the first of May, in the year 1769," 
the record begins, 'Hhat I resigned my domestic 
happiness for a time, and left my family and 
peaceable habitation on the Yadkin River, in North 
Carolina, to wander through the wilderness of 
America, in quest of the country of Kentucky in 
company with John Finley, John Stewart, Joseph 
Holden, James Mooney, and William Cooley. We 
proceeded successfully, and after a long and 
fatiguing journey, through a mountainous wilder- 
ness, in a westward direction, on the seventh day 
of June following we found ourselves on Red River, 
where John Finley had formerly been trading with 
the Indians, and, from the top of an eminence, saw 
with pleasure the beautiful level of Kentucky. 
Here let me observe, that for some time we had 
experienced the most uncomfortable weather as a 
prelibation [foretaste] of our future suffering." 

Save for the brief reference to the weather, 



AMONG HOSTILE INDIANS 79 

Boone said nothing of any trials which they may 
have experienced as they scaled the Blue Ridge 
and Stone and Iron mountains, nor of hardships as 
they came down into the valleys of the Holston 
and CHnch rivers in Tennessee. Perhaps they 
were forgotten in the more severe affiictions to 
follow. 

As they left the Clinch region, they crossed 
various smaller streams and lesser hills, and at 
length they came into Powell's Valley, lying at the 
foot of the Cumberland Mountains, where nestled 
the last white settlement of the frontier. There 
they found an old hunter's trail which Finley knew, 
and this led them through Cumberland Gap to 
the "Warriors' Path," a well-trodden way over 
which the Northern Indian war-parties came and 
went in eastern Kentucky. They followed it until 
they reached a tributary of the Kentucky River, 
in Estill County, now called Station Camp Creek, 
because there Boone built a station camp, to serve 
as a habitation during their exploration and hunt- 
ing. Daniel Boone had at last reached Kentucky ! 

*' At this place," he said to his quaint biographer, 
"we camped, and made a shelter from the in- 
clement season, and began to hunt and reconnoiter 
the country. We found everywhere abundance 
of wild beasts of all sorts through this vast forest. 



8o DANIEL BOONE 

The buffaloes were more frequent than I have seen 
cattle in the settlements, browsing on the leaves 
of the cane, or cropping the herbage on those 
extensive plains, fearless because ignorant of the 
violence of man. Sometimes we saw hundreds in 
a drove, and the numbers about the salt springs 
were amazing. In this forest, the habitation of 
beasts of every kind natural to America, we prac- 
ticed hunting with great success, until the twenty- 
second day of December following." 

Even in his old age Boone did not forget 
the profound impression which the wonders of 
Kentucky had made upon him as a man of 
thirty-five. 

No government or institution fitted out these 
explorers, as is customary nowadays. Expenses 
as well as hardships they bore themselves. So it 
was necessary for them to begin their hunting at 
once, in order that they might have fresh meat 
for food and store up furs and skins to be sold later 
on. Deerskins usually brought a dollar apiece; 
beaver furs were worth about two dollars and a 
half, while otter pelts fetched from three to five 
dollars. The more bulky skins of bears, elks, and 
buffaloes were rarely carried to distant markets, 
but were utilized at home — elk hides for harnesses, 
and bear and buffalo skins for bedding. Even some 



AMONG HOSTILE INDIANS 8i 

of us to-day have been tucked under buffalo robes, 
when we have been sleighing. 

Boone and his comrades hunted in pairs, for the 
sake of protection as well as companionship, while 
two remained to guard the camp. They wandered 
far and near, Daniel in particular learning every 
hill and dale in the region, and their stores grew 
rapidly. They skinned their animals on the spot, 
and in the evenings smoked the meat, which later 
would be jerked, and dried or cured the skins. 
The bear's oil and buffalo tallow were saved to be 
used as cooking-fat. 

One December day Daniel and his brother-in-law, 
John Stewart, who was usually his hunting-comrade 
and a lively talker, set out to explore the land along 
the banks of the Kentucky River. The day passed 
pleasantly. Their rambling took them through a 
great forest where some trees were in blossom while 
others bore delicious fruit. Much game was to 
be seen, and altogether the country was, as Filson 
says, "a series of wonders and a fund of delight." 

Toward sunset, however, as they were climbing 
a slight hill, a number of Indians rushed from a 
thick canebrake, surrounded the two hunters, 
threw them on the ground, and bound their arms 
to their bodies. Boone and Stewart knew that 
Indian paths crossed Kentucky in various direc- 



82 DANIEL BOONE 

tions, and that, if they ventured into this hunting- 
ground, they would be exposed to dangers. Finley 
had told them so, but for six months at least there 
had been no signs of red men. Now appeared a 
band of Shawnee horsemen who were on their 
way back to the Ohio after a hunt on Green River, 
and, according to the old story-teller, "the time of 
our sorrow was now arrived." 

In some ways, the Shawnees may have been 
superior to other Indian tribes. They at least 
thought themselves so. "The Master of Life, 
who was himself an Indian," said one of their chiefs 
at a convention held at Fort Wayne in 1803, "made 
the Shawnees before any of the human race ; and 
they sprang from his brain. He gave them all the 
knowledge he himself possessed, and placed them 
upon the great island, and all the other red people 
are descended from the Shawnees. After he had 
made the Shawnees, he made the French out of 
his breast, the Dutch out of his feet, and the 'Long 
Knives' ^ out of his hands. All these inferior 
races of men he made white and placed them be- 
yond the ill-smelKng lake [the Atlantic Ocean]. The 
Shawnees for many ages continued to be masters 

^The term "Long Knives" was an Indian epithet for the 
English, either because they used swords, or because they used 
knives rather than the stone instruments of the savages. 



AMONG HOSTILE INDIANS 83 

of the continent, using the knowledge they had 
received from the Great Spirit in such a manner 
as to be pleasing to him, and to secure their own 
happiness. 

"In a great length of time, however, they became 
corrupt, and the Master of Life told them that he 
would take away from them the knowledge which 
they possessed and give it to the white people, to 
be restored when they would deserve it. Many 
ages after that, they saw something white approach- 
ing their shores. At first they took it for a great 
bird, but they soon found it to be a monstrous 
canoe filled with the very people who had got the 
knowledge which belonged to the Shawnees. After 
these white people landed, they were not content 
with having the knowledge which belonged to the 
Shawnees, but they usurped their lands also. They 
pretended, indeed, to have purchased these lands, 
but the very goods they gave for them were more 
the property of the Indians than the white people, 
because the knowledge which enabled them to 
manufacture these goods actually belonged to the 
Shawnees. 

''But these things will soon have an end. The 
Master of Life is about to restore to the Shawnees 
both their knowledge and their rights, and 
trample the Long Knives under his feet." 



84 DANIEL BOONE 

Whether or not they were more able than other 
Indian nations, the Shawnees were a restless, fero- 
cious people, and, like all other tribes, held a grudge 
against the colonists. 

One of the Shawnee band spoke English, and he 
told the hunters that, according to their treaty ¥/ith 
the white men — a treaty of which Boone probably 
knew nothing — Kentucky was the Indians' own 
hunting-ground. He said that the white men had 
promised to keep out of it, and that, if Boone and 
Stewart dared to return again, *'the wasps and 
yellow- jackets will sting you severely." 

Then the savages ordered Boone and Stewart to 
lead them to their camp. Being unable to resist, 
the borderers did as they were told. As they came 
to the station, the Shawnees suddenly rushed for- 
ward and seized the others of the party. With great 
glee they stole all the precious store of pelts, jerked 
meat, and arms, except just enough for the settlers' 
return journey to North Carolina, and made off 
with them cunningly. 

Great was Boone's anger and distress. Finley 
advised them all to flee at once, but Daniel declared 
that he would not go home a poorer man than he 
had set out. Stewart alone agreed with him. 
They two decided to pursue the Shawnees, although 
the Indian band was a large one, and attempt to 



AMONG HOSTILE INDIANS 85 

regain their stolen possessions. With great caution 
they hurried forward, and, after two days, overtook 
the Indians. They secreted themselves in the 
bushes until dark, and then, in spite of the crackling 
of twigs and the thud of hoofs, they managed to 
make off with four or five horses. 

Boone acted cleverly, but the Shawnees were 
not to be outwitted by any white man. They 
turned in pursuit, and, after a two-days' chase, 
caught Daniel and Stewart, made them pris- 
oners for the second time, and took them to the 
Shawnee villages on the Scioto River in the Ohio 
region. 

Daniel's knowledge of Indian characteristics, 
which he had been acquiring from boyhood, stood 
him in good stead. He did as the savages them- 
selves would have done — pretended indifference — 
and so got the best of the red men after all. 

"The Indians plundered us of what we had," 
his story goes, "and kept us in confinement seven 
days, treating us with common savage usage. Dur- 
ing this time we showed no uneasiness, which made 
them less suspicious of us. But in the dead of 
night, as we lay in a thick canebrake by a large fire, 
when sleep had locked up their senses, ... I 
touched my companion, and gently woke him. We 
improved this favorable opportunity, and departed, 



86 DANIEL BOONE 

leaving them to take their rest, and speedily 
directed our course towards our old camp." 

They crept away from the firelight into the 
blackness of the forest night, and felt their way 
along through trees and canebrakes as best they 
could. Doubtless Boone's active mind had been 
planning this strategy ever since their capture, and 
with his calculations and wood lore they kept their 
bearings in the dark. All the next day they hur- 
ried on, not daring to stop for rest, and in safety 
reached their station. Had the Indians been on the 
warpath instead of hunting, Boone and Stewart 
would have found themselves more closely watched, 
and they probably would have been pursued and 
captured. If a prisoner to whom the Indians had 
been lenient tried to run away, he committed a 
mortal offense, according to savage etiquette, and 
had to pay the penalty. 

The camp still stood in its dense thicket, but it 
was empty. Finley, Cooley, Mooney, and Holden 
had disappeared. Beheving that Daniel and Stew- 
art had given their lives for their foolhardiness, 
they had turned back home. As it chanced. Squire 
Boone — the crops having been gathered — was 
coming westward at that time over the Warriors' 
Path with horses and ammunition, and with him 
came a hunter, named Alexander Neeley, whom he 



AMONG HOSTILE INDIANS 87 

had met in the mountains. There, in the famous 
red men's trail, Squire heard all the news of Daniel 
which the little party had to offer, and, supposing 
with Finley and the others that his brother had 
perished, he turned back sorrowfully, and the six 
journeyed homeward together. 

After their successful escape from the Shawnee 
band on the Scioto, Boone and Stewart kept on 
eastward in search of their companions, and early 
in January overtook the sad party, well but exceed- 
ingly wan and ragged. It is said that Finley and 
the others noticed two men coming through the 
forest, and, unable to see whether they were white 
men or Indians, they seized their rifles and took to 
the trees for shelter and observation. The 
strangers gave the signs of white men, but that did 
not satisfy Finley, as Indians knew and often used 
these signs to deceive the settlers. 

Finally Boone cried, ''Hello, strangers! Who 
are you?" 

The others answered, ''White men, and friends." 

Then Daniel and Squire recognized each other, 
and great was the rejoicing. Soon after, as they 
sat about the fire, eating, — for probably Boone and 
Stewart v/ere desperately hungry, — Squire made 
Daniel happy with good news from his family. 

In spite of his disheartening experiences, Boone 



88 DANIEL BOONE 

was as determined as ever not to go home empty- 
handed. He discussed the situation at length, and 
decided to return west for another season of hunt- 
ing. Squire Boone, Stewart, and Neeley were 
ready to venture with him, but the others had lost 
courage. They preferred civilization to the en- 
raged Indians of Kentucky. The good friends, 
Finley and Boone, said good-by with much regret, 
and took their separate ways through the forest. 
As far as is known, they never saw each other after 
this parting in the wilderness. 

The two brothers, with Stewart and Neeley, 
chose a new site for their camp farther from the 
Warriors' Path, on the northern bank of the Ken- 
tucky River near the mouth of the Red. Here 
they built a canoe, and paddled many hours along 
the river-bank, set traps for otters and beavers, 
and hunted, ate, and slept, as tired and successful 
hunters should. 

One night late in January or early February, 
Stewart failed to return to the camp. His disap- 
pearance was alarming. Search was made, but 
nothing more was ever known of him until Boone 
happened in the region five years later, and found, 
in the hollow trunk of a sycamore tree on Rock 
Castle River, the bones of a human being and a 
powderhorn bearing Stewart's name. Neeley was 



AMONG HOSTILE INDIANS 89 

terrified at the vanishing of their genial friend, and, 
gathering together his winter's stock of furs, hastily 
set off for home. Daniel and Squire were left alone, 
the only white men in that wild and dangerous 
country. 

"Thus situated, many hundred miles from our 
families, in the howhng wilderness," writes Filson, 
**I believe few would have equally enjoyed the 
happiness we experienced. I often observed to 
my brother, ^ You see now how little nature requires 
to be satisfied. Felicity, the companion of content, 
is rather found in our own breasts than in the en- 
joyment of external things. I firmly believe it 
requires but a little philosophy to make a man 
happy in whatsoever state he is ! ' " 

They built a little house for winter, and con- 
tinued to hunt every day. Not an Indian was 
seen. When spring came, their ammunition was 
almost exhausted. Hunters must have powder 
and lead, and it appeared necessary for one of the 
brothers to return to the settlement for supplies. 
They also wanted to sell their stores in order to pay 
the large debts which they had contracted for the 
expenses of their undertaking. It was agreed that 
time and money would be saved, and experience 
gained, if one remained to keep the camp, arms, and 
traps in order, while the other returned to transact 



go DANIEL BOONE 

the business at home. Daniel decided to be the 
one to stay in Kentucky. He wanted to explore 
still farther, for by this time he had determined to 
move his family thither, foreseeing that, before 
many years, Kentucky would be settled, and that, 
if he desired to be a leader, he must build his home 
there soon. 

On May first, 1770, just one year after Daniel 
had left the Yadkin Valley, Squire Boone loaded 
his horses with many furs and much jerked meat, 
bade Daniel a resolute good-by, and turned down 
the Warriors' Path. A strange May Day for the 
brothers — one setting out alone to travel four 
hundred miles through the wilderness, the other 
left alone in the wilderness to wait! 



CHAPTER X 

Alone in the Wilderness 

The young leaves rustled in the spring air, and 
here and there a dead twig cracked and fell to the 
ground. Save for these sounds of nature and an 
occasional wild call, the woods were still. Squire 
was gone, and only fresh hoof-tracks marked his de- 
parture along the trail. Daniel stood and listened. 
He was alone, "without bread, salt, or sugar, with- 
out company of my fellow-creatures, or even a horse 
or dog." And wilderness in every direction. 

Many years later, as he recalled this lonely mo- 
ment and the lonely days which followed, he 
admitted that for a time he was very melancholy. 
Thoughts of his home and his wife's anxiety at his 
plight made him uneasy, and he was obliged to 
exercise much philosophy in order to keep up his 
courage. This unhappiness, however, soon passed, 
and he found constant delight in his explorations. 
As he said, "No populous city, with all the varieties 
of commerce and stately structures, could afford so 
much pleasure to my mind, as the beauties of 
nature which I found here." 

91 



92 DANIEL BOONE 

He tramped day after day, hunting only now and 
then, when food was necessary, in order to make his 
ammunition last until Squire's return. He was 
ever on the lookout for a species of nettle which 
filled the woods at that time. When it was once 
crushed by a foot, it retained the footprint almost 
like snow. Even a turkey's track could be traced 
in it. Boone could thus tell the movements of the 
Indians, who, having no one to fear, paid little 
heed to the telltale plant. But Daniel himself 
stepped carefully. 

One tour through the country pleased him greatly. 
He made his way almost across the land now in- 
cluded in the state, and from the summit of a 
high ridge discovered the Ohio River, a beautiful, 
flowing boundary to the west. Below him lay 
ample plains, and in the distance rose cloud- 
capped mountains. He kindled a fire near a spring 
of sweet water, and roasted the loin of a buck 
which he had killed a few hours earlier, and, when 
night came down, he fashioned a bed and fell asleep. 

Such uninterrupted excursions made him per- 
fectly familiar with Kentucky. He found the 
climate temperate and healthful, the well-timbered 
surface broken with hills and pretty plains, the soil 
dark and rich. The trees were large and of many 
kinds — the honey locust, bearing its fruit in long 



ALONE IN THE WILDERNESS 93 

pods; the coffee tree, somewhat resembling the 
black oak ; the papaw tree, the cucumber tree, the 
buckeye, the mulberry, as well as the more common 
trees which grew elsewhere. Cane was plenty, and 
grew from three to twelve feet high. When there 
was no cane, wild rye, buffalo-grass, and clover 
abounded, with pepper-grass and wild lettuce here 
and there. Many flowers brightened the plains 
and valleys, among them the brilliant cardinal 
flower. 

In the various rivers watering Kentucky there 
were buffalo-fish and catfish, trout, mullet, perch, 
lively eels, sunfish, and suckers. Frequently Boone 
came upon turkeys, quail, and grouse; and now 
and then he saw the white feathers of an ivory-billed 
woodcock flash through the woods, or heard the 
strange call of a great owl, sounding like a human 
being in distress. We know that he found animals 
enough to please even his extravagant desires — 
buffaloes by hundreds at the salt licks or in the grass 
or canebrakes; panthers and wild cats; wolves, 
prowling at night ; bears, deer, and elk ; the water 
creatures, beavers, otters, minks, and muskrats; 
the common foxes, rabbits, squirrels, raccoons, 
ground-hogs, polecats, and opossums ; and on rare 
occasions a frog or reptile, for Kentucky had few 
swamps. 



94 DANIEL BOONE 

At intervals he returned to his old camp which 
remained undisturbed, although Daniel felt that 
Indians often visited it. To escape any chance 
onslaught from them at night, he usually slept 
in the canebrakes. There he appears to have had 
no more fear than in the camp, although his rest 
was sometimes broken by the howling of wolves. 

Most of his time he spent near the Licking and 
Kentucky rivers and along the Ohio, going as far 
down as the Falls and the present site of Louisville, 
where he found an old fur-trading station of which 
Finley had told him. Many strange and curious 
things interested him as well as the beautiful scen- 
ery — the salt springs and the licks in particular, 
Big Lick, Blue Licks, and Big Bone Lick. Buffaloes 
came to these places in such numbers to lick the 
salty soil that they had worn roads through the 
woods in various directions, and had trampled and 
eaten bare the land near the springs. At Knob 
Licks, it is said that hunters once saw ^'over a 
thousand buffaloes, elk, bears, and deer, with 
many wild turkeys scattered among them, all quite 
restless, some playing, and others busily employed 
in licking the earth. At length they took flight 
and bounded away, all in one direction,so that in the 
brief space of a couple of minutes not an animal was 
to be seen." 



ALONE IN THE WILDERNESS 95 

There were no permanent Indian settlements in 
Kentucky. Various tribes claimed it and fought 
with each other for it, but it was left open as a 
common hunting-ground. Daniel caught glimpses 
of many red men, usually Chickasaws, Cherokees, 
and Shawnees, as he lurked in hiding. His joy in 
outwitting them was great. Once, when he was 
creeping along the banks of the Kentucky River, 
he espied an Indian fishing from a fallen tree- trunk. 
Fearing that the savage might report his presence, 
Boone shot him, or so we suppose, for, as Daniel 
significantly told his family later, ''While I was 
looking at the fellow, he tumbled into the river, 
and I saw him no more !" 

When Boone was once wandering along Dick's 
River, he was quite unexpectedly surrounded by 
Indians. The river offered him the only means of 
escape, yet the bank descended abruptly sixty feet 
to the water below. Rather than surrender, he 
leaped the sixty feet, landed in the top of a maple 
tree, sped along the overhanging bank, plunged 
into the river, and swam in safety to the other side. 

A band of forty expert hunters from the New 
River and Holston valleys, known as the ''Long 
Hunters" (because of their long absence from 
home) were among those who fared westward about 
this time, and they told an amusing story of Daniel. 



96 DANIEL BOONE 

When going into camp one night, they said, they 
heard a strange noise in the forest. The leader 
ordered all to be silent, and he himself crept along 
as stealthily as possible, under cover of the trees, 
toward the sound. He was much astonished to 
come upon *'a man, bare-headed, stretched flat 
upon his back on a deerskin spread on the ground, 
singing merrily at the top of his voice." It was 
Daniel Boone ! Thus, in spite of dangers, did he 
amuse himself now and then during Squire's 
absence. 

On the 27th of July, Squire returned, riding one 
horse and leading another heavily laden with the 
necessary supplies. According to agreement, they 
met at their old camp, where Squire was indeed 
thankful to find Daniel alive and well. He brought 
him good news and affectionate messages from the 
family, which must have seemed very precious to 
the lone hunter, and told him of the neat sum which 
their furs had brought at market. Altogether, 
life seemed auspicious on that July day. 

They began their hunting at once, and, un- 
molested, their stores grew apace. In October, 
Squire again returned to the Yadkin Valley on 
business, and Daniel spent two solitary months in 
the wilderness. By the New Year, Squire was 
back again, and together they joined the ''Long 



ALONE IN THE WILDERNESS 97 

Hunters" for a season. They moved their camp 
from the Kentucky River to the Cumberland, and 
explored the region between the Cumberland and 
Green rivers. Here the band amused themselves 
by naming rivers and hills for members of the party, 
as any one will readily infer if he examines the 
present map of Kentucky. The uneventful winter 
was pleasant and profitable. 

When March came, they decided to go home. 
Daniel's happiness was great. He had been away 
from the settlements two years, "during which time 
he had tasted neither bread nor salt, nor had he 
seen any other human being than his traveling 
companions and Indians." They had a store of 
fine furs, which would settle their debts, and with 
clear consciences they could bring their families 
later to Kentucky. The "air castles" they built 
were exceedingly primitive, but to these backwoods- 
men they represented happiness and a life more 
free and prosperous. The "Long Hunters" were 
sorry to part with their comrades, especially with 
Daniel, who, although silent by nature, was always 
a wise and sympathetic friend. The brothers 
swung into their saddles, turned down the Warriors' 
Path, and wound their way again through Cumber- 
land Gap into Powell's Valley. 

There, alas, their dreams vanished ! Certain 



98 DANIEL BOONE 

northern Indians on the warpath, who had been 
raiding Cherokee and Catawba villages as well as 
white settlements, fell upon them and robbed them 
of everything, leaving them absolutely destitute. 
Daniel's experience and precious knowledge of 
Kentucky, however, could not be stolen. After 
this harsh and unexpected treatment, they went on 
empty-handed toward home. There was nothing 
else to do. 

Forlorn and poor, and hating Indians more bit- 
terly than ever, Daniel came rather dejectedly into 
the Yadkin Valley, but he was a hero nevertheless 
— a hero to his wife and small sons and daughters, 
as weU as to his many friends whose future in a 
large measure depended on his knowledge of the 
land beyond the mountains. 

^'I returned," as he himself said later, "with a 
determination to bring them as soon as possible, 
even at the risk of my life and fortune, to live in 
Kentucky, which I esteemed a second paradise." 



CHAPTER XI 
The Hero of the Southwest 

News of Boone's return and misfortune spread 
from cabin to cabin like a flame in the grass. As 
soon as they could spare a moment, friends came 
to hear the sorry details and to sympathize. But 
Daniel's interest in his new-found paradise was so 
much greater than his depression, that they spent 
long hours listening to his wonderful stories. 

It was a beautiful land of promise, he told them, 
and he knew, for he had seen it in all winds and 
weathers — when the sun was warm and high, 
when the rivers rushed and roared after the spring 
and autumn rains, when the occasional snowstorm 
came and dropped a thin, white mantle over the 
wilderness. To the delight of the farmers, he 
described Kentucky's soil as being so fertile that 
almost anywhere they might have a good garden 
or meadow without dressing and without water, 
as showers were frequent. He was sure that in 
some places the land would be too rich for wheat 
until after it had been cultivated for a few years, 
but he believed that turnips and potatoes would 

99 



lOO DANIEL BOONE 

grow in abundance, and small grain flourish in the 
poorer land. The hunters delighted in his tales 
of game — of deer and elk and great herds of buf- 
faloes, each one weighing from five hundred to a 
thousand pounds. They meant good beef, and their 
hides, good leather. Was there any wonder that 
he determined to return as soon as possible to such 
a favored country ? 

He inspired great enthusiasm in his hearers, and 
many wished to go with him. Both Daniel and 
his neighbors probably knew of the proclamation 
which the king had sent out in 1763, after the defeat 
of the French, forbidding his ''loving subjects" 
to settle west of the mountains. Very likely the 
king was selfish, wanting to keep the wilderness 
fur- trade for London merchants, or fearing that he 
might lose control of the settlers if they moved 
farther from the coast. Perhaps he desired to 
assure peace to the borderers by promising the 
Indians all rights for a time to western lands. The 
colonists, however, paid little heed to him; they 
needed the West and they intended to have it. 

Various explorers, beginning with early French- 
men and fur-traders, had casually revealed the 
riches of this uncultivated country, so that Daniel 
Boone was not the first to make western settlement 
appear desirable. Even he had been piloted into 



THE HERO OF THE SOUTHWEST loi 

Kentucky by his genial friend John Finley, but 
Boone was the first to have an extensive knowledge 
of the land beyond the frontiers. He alone was 
an authority. 

Daniel told his friends that he planned to return 
to Kentucky as soon as he could arrange his affairs. 
Yet again he was delayed, and two years and a half 
slipped by before he could leave the Yadkin Valley. 
Being a poor man, it was necessary for him to sell 
his farm and surplus possessions in order that he 
might have the money they would bring for the 
equipment for his journey. At that time it was 
particularly difiicult to dispose of property. The 
population along the Atlantic coast had been 
increasing so rapidly that settlements, even on 
former borders, were becoming crowded, and 
game was fast disappearing. Real estate was 
undesirable and consequently cheap. The settlers 
were also discontented with the illegal and excessive 
demands of tax-collectors. When the power of 
France in the West was broken, and the wilderness 
was no longer feared, borderers were glad to leave 
their old homes in this region for a freer life along 
the western streams — Watauga, Clinch, Powell, 
French, Broad, Holston, and NoHchucky, all 
flowing into the Tennessee ; the Monongahela, 
and other tributaries of the Ohio. So Daniel had 



I02 DANIEL BOONE 

difficulty in finding some one who wanted to buy 
his property in North Carolina. But eventually 
he sold it, and, as it had been cultivated for a num- 
ber of years, it should have brought a good sum for 
those times. During the two years and a half of 
waiting, he farmed and hunted, moved his family to 
live for a time in the Watauga Valley, and traveled 
at least twice to Kentucky. On the second trip he 
probably selected the site for his new home. 

The spring and summer of 1773 were spent in 
preparation, and at length in September everything 
for the all-important move was ready. Various 
relatives from the Bryan settlement and neighbors 
of the Yadkin Valley had decided to cast in their 
lot with Boone. The Yadkin settlers had sold their 
farms, and, like Daniel, were homeless, their shelter 
for weeks to be the open air by day, and skins, cloth, 
or bedding hung between upright poles, by night. 
The Bryan band numbered forty men who planned 
to precede their families and so have cabins ready 
for them in the wilderness. Rebecca Boone and 
the children, and the other Yadkin families, how- 
ever, were to go at once. Border women were as 
courageous as their pioneer husbands, and honor 
should be paid them equally. They feared nothing, 
and were ready for the hardships of such a journey. 
They would have to travel on foot or horseback over 



THE HERO OF THE SOUTHWEST 103 

narrow, precipitous trails, and sleep in the open in 
all weathers, perhaps sometimes hungry, if game 
was scarce. Yet without doubt hope shone in 
Rebecca Boone's black eyes as she mounted her 
horse and took in her arms the Boone baby, John, 
born that year and probably the youngest pioneer 
to set off for the wilderness. 

If the other Yadkin families were as large as 
Daniel's, the caravan must have made an imposing 
appearance, even before the Bryans joined them in 
Powell's Valley. James Boone was then a fine, 
sturdy youth of sixteen ;^ Israel was fourteen. The 
six other children were younger — Susannah, thir- 
teen; Jemima, eleven; Lavinia, seven; Rebecca, 
^vq; Daniel Morgan, four ; and baby John. Pack- 
horses carried their provisions, clothing, and other 
necessities, while a few young cattle and swine, and 
a number of cows to give milk for the children, 
were to be driven along as a nucleus for Boone's 
herd in the wilderness. 

Mingled feelings moved the friends left behind on 
September 25, as the band of pilgrims passed out 
of the valley toward their uncertain future. Good 
neighbors were gone forever, and the region would 
be poorer for want of Daniel and Rebecca Boone. 
Yet who w^ould desire to keep them from a life more 

^ Authority, Draper manuscript and R. G. Thwaites. 



104 DANIEL BOONE 

prosperous ? Young and old wished them well and 
watched the train disappear, even to the whisk of the 
last horse's tail, at a bend in the road. Probably 
little work was done that day in the valley. 

Daniel planned to follow his old trail from North 
Carolina to Kentucky, crossing three ranges of 
mountains and passing out into the promised land 
by way of Cumberland Gap. This route lay 
through Powell's Valley, where they went into 
camp to await five more families and the forty men 
from the Bryan settlement who were to join them. 
As they all were to be well armed, this reinforcement 
gave Boone added confidence. The days passed 
quietly with hunting and the necessary camp- 
keeping, and every night the cattle were made 
secure in a meadow, the horses hobbled and belled, 
and the family slept comfortably in their woodland 
beds. 

While Boone was waiting in camp for the other 
settlers, he asked his son James to ride across the 
country with two men and pack-horses to announce 
their arrival to a settler, William Russell, on Clinch 
River, and to purchase there flour and farming 
tools. As Russell's place was not far distant, 
Daniel believed that the business could be accom- 
plished in a single day. James set off, and bought 
the supplies as his father had directed. As he was 



THE HERO OF THE SOUTHWEST 105 

returning with Russell's son Henry, a lad of seven- 
teen, two of Russell's negro slaves, and two or three 
white workers, he lost the trail when only three 
miles from Boone's camp, and remained there for 
the night. The camp fire attracted a band of 
Shawnees who were homeward bound after an 
attack upon their enemies, the Cherokees, on the 
Little Tennessee River, and, in spite of promises 
and treaties, they stealthily surrounded the sleepers 
to await the dawn. When daylight broke, they fell 
upon them with tomahawk and rifle, and bore away 
their scalps. The attack was so sudden that resist- 
ance was impossible. Only two of the seven, a 
Clinch River settler and a negro slave, escaped. 
The others — James Boone among them — were 
left dead. 

The two fleeing survivors staggered into Boone's 
camp, and there told Daniel and Rebecca of the 
murder of their firstborn. The sorrow and despair 
of that chill October morning can hardly be ex- 
pressed in words. The great-hearted border women 
tried to console the grieving mother, and a handful 
of men went forward quietly to the scene of the 
massacre with Boone, who himself was stern and 
silent as never before. 

In his last camp lay the youthful James, and 
Daniel with all tenderness stooped and lifted the 



io6 DANIEL BOONE 

form of his boy, once so attractive and now so 
mangled. The ground was opened, and after a 
few words of prayer, the bodies of James and his 
comrades were intrusted to the forest. Boone 
would surely have been touched if he could have 
known, as he turned away from those rude graves, 
that one hundred and fifty years later loyal Amer- 
icans would place a tablet there,^ reading : 

Near this spot 

James Boone 

aged 1 8 yrs.^ 

Eldest son of Daniel Boone 

was killed by Indians 

October lo, 1773 



Erected by the Virginia 
D. A. R. 

In silence the little train turned back toward the 
camp, brooding on the calamity and crime. Boone, 
for one, was in a merciless mood and vowed that 
these savages, forever menacing white men, should 
be taught their lesson. 

Meanwhile, the forty settlers from Powell's 
Valley and the Valley of Virginia had arrived in 

* Between Ewing and Wheeler's Station in Lee County, Virginia. 
2 Authority, John Filson. 



THE HERO OF THE SOUTHWEST 107 

good spirits, only to have their ardor at once 
dampened by the terrible news. The situation was 
discussed at length. Boone, always invincible, 
was ready to go forward at once, but the others 
believed that this onslaught was merely the begin- 
ning of a general Indian uprising. To proceed thus 
into the very jaws of death would be foolhardy. 
They advised waiting until spring, when, if there 
were no more Indian "signs," the journey might be 
again undertaken. Boone argued and urged, for, 
having spent his all for this one venture, he longed 
to proceed. But the others were not to be moved, 
and, as time proved, their opinion was wiser than 
Boone's. 

They packed up and retraced their way forty 
miles to the settlement on Clinch River. Boone and 
his family, no longer having a home on the Yadkin, 
would not return to the old valley, but went to live 
in a deserted cabin on the farm belonging to Cap- 
tain David Gass, situated seven or eight miles from 
Russell's on the Clinch. News of their misfortune 
spread through the region until, as a letter of the 
time reads, "the murder of Russell's, Boone's and 
Drake's sons is in every one's mouth." 

The following winter was sad and hard. Daniel 
could rely only on his cattle and chance game for 
his family's support, and by June he was thankful 



io8 DANIEL BOONE 

enough to be able to accept a sudden commission 
with promise of good pay from Governor Dunmore 
of Virginia. 

Intelligence and prosperity had been growing 
among England's colonists living between the 
Atlantic coast and the Alleghanies, and also a de- 
termination to have either the rights, which the 
king had promised them by charter, or their inde- 
pendence. Hostilities, which culminated in the 
Revolution and made them free, had already begun. 
While this warfare was developing, their savage 
enemies to the west felt their growing power and 
their desire for the rich Mississippi Valley, and 
once more Indian hatred flamed along their fron- 
tiers. When thirteen relatives of the Mingo chief- 
tain, Logan, long a friend to white men, were 
wantonly murdered by a band of lawless borderers, 
the ire of the Indians broke into open war. The 
Mingos hastened runners to bear the war-pipe in 
every direction ; defiant messages were sent to the 
frontiersmen ; and in a few days the war, known as 
Lord Dunmore's War, was raging on the borders — 
the last American war in which American soldiers 
fought under the flag of England. 

Some months later Logan, with thirteen scalps 
in his hand, said, *'Now I am satisfied for the 
loss of my relations and will sit still." 



THE HERO OF THE SOUTHWEST 109 

Troops were mustered at once, and Lord 'Dun- 
more, remembering a party of surveyors under 
Captain John Floyd, at work somewhere near the 
Falls of the Ohio, who would now be in great danger, 
ordered messengers to go to the wilderness and bring 
them back. Colonel William Preston, comman- 
dant of the Southwest militia, asked Captain Wil- 
liam Russell, then the principal man in the Clinch 
Valley, to employ "two faithful woodsmen" for 
the purpose. The task would be by no means easy. 
It would require unusual courage and endurance 
and a knowledge of the country, as the whereabouts 
of the surveyors was unknown. He chose Daniel 
Boone and Michael Stoner. Boone alone of all 
the colonists knew Kentucky. 

Late in June, 1774, Boone and Stoner left the 
Clinch Valley and made all haste toward Cumber- 
land Gap. Within ten days they were in the very 
heart of Kentucky where Harrodsburg stands 
to-day. There, to his great disappointment, Boone 
found James Harrod and thirty-four pioneers laying 
off a town. With a sudden tugging at his heart, 
he realized that now the settlement which he 
planned could not be the first in Kentucky. The 
Shawnee attack of the year before had not only cost 
him his son but this cherished plan as well. Boone 
accepted his disappointment, and even registered 



no DANIEL BOONE 

as a settler, hastily putting up a small cabin for the 
future. Harrod was grateful for the timely warn- 
ing, and he and his party made their way home 
safely. They later returned to make their settle- 
ment permanent, just a month before Boone 
founded his own historic colony. 

Boone and S toner continued their mission to the 
Falls of the Ohio, the present site of Louisville, 
and there they searched out Captain Floyd's band 
of surveyors and other parties, and told them of the 
peril. A brief rest and a little hunting, and then 
the messengers hurried back to the Clinch. Just 
two months from the time of their departure Boone 
was again with his family, having traveled eight 
hundred miles through the unbroken forest, en- 
countered numberless difficulties and dangers, and 
accomplished his work. All but two of the sur- 
veyors had been saved. 

During his absence, Lord Dunmore had ordered 
out nearly three thousand backwoodsmen against 
the Shawnees from beyond the Ohio. In those 
days, almost every man was obliged to be a soldier. 
Even farming was often carried on under arms, a 
sentinel keeping guard over the stacked rifles of the 
workers in the field. At a word from the watch- 
man, they all could rush to their guns and be ready 
for combat at a moment's notice. Many of Boone's 



THE HERO OF THE SOUTHWEST iii 

friends of the Clinch region had left for the cam- 
paign, Captain Russell among them, and Boone at 
once set off with a few recruits, whom he had been 
asked to raise, to overtake them and to help to 
bring an end to Indian outrages. Captain John 
Floyd wrote Colonel Preston, on August 28 of that 
year, as follows : 

"You will hear of Mr. Boone's return, & desire 
of going out. ... 1 may let Boone join me and 
try. Captain Bledsoe says Boone has more interest 
[influence] than any man now disengaged ; & you 
know what Boone has done for me by your kind 
instructions, for which reason 1 love the man." 

The departure of so many borderers, however, 
had left the frontiers of the Southwest with little 
protection, and Boone was ordered to return, as his 
service was needed in the valley of the CKnch. 

The settlers were huddled together in their little 
forts, garrisoned by men not serving in the militia 
and by boys, who in those days were taught to 
be fort soldiers, with a porthole assigned to each 
in time of attack. The region appeared deserted 
save for fields of grain and the live stock running 
loose on the ranges. Whenever there came a lull in 
hostilities, the settlers stole from their strongholds 
to give what care they could to their abandoned 
farms. But during their absence, wolves and bears 



112 DANIEL BOONE 

often devoured their sheep and hogs, and squirrels 
and raccoons ate their corn. Thus many famiHes, 
who had worked hard during spring and summer 
to make their farms successful, suddenly found their 
labor all for naught. 

Boone was made lieutenant, and assigned Moore's 
Fort with twenty men, which command he assumed 
immediately. He kept his little garrison constantly 
on the move, hastening at once to the relief of any 
neighborhood stronghold which was attacked and 
in distress. Records say that he was by far the 
most active commander in the valley. He and his 
men traced marauding Indians and shot them, 
made frequent sallies among the savages, and did 
their best to hold the Southwest frontier. At one 
time he secured a war-club which he believed the 
Cherokees had left, and sent it to Major Campbell. 
A war-club found beside a murdered person was one 
of the Indian ^* signs" of hostility. The red men 
also used the war-club in voting for the life or death 
of a captive. Those who wished to kill him, struck 
the club on the council-house floor, while those 
who desired to let the man live, passed on the club 
in silence. Late in September, Major Campbell 
wrote Colonel Preston, *'Mr. Boone is very diligent 
at Castle- Woods and keeps up good Orders." 

All this activity made him a familiar figure in the 



THE HERO OF THE SOUTHWEST 113 

valley "as he went about fulfilling his military duties, 
*' dressed in deerskin colored black, and his hair 
plaited and clubbed up." His devotion and tireless 
efforts endeared him to the settlers, and Major 
Campbell said, ^'I am well informed he is a very 
popular Officer where he is known." Gladly and 
simply he gave his service, and thought little of 
material rewards; but the borderers felt that he 
should have the recompense which he so well 
deserved. 

At the wish of his many friends, Boone was 
appointed captain of the three lower forts, and 
accepted the honor modestly, no doubt greatly 
pleased by the confidence of his fellow-settlers. 
Already his exploits were the talk of the towns on 
the coast as well as on the borders, and this compli- 
ment and his continued successes increased his 
fame until no frontiersman was as well known 
throughout the country as Daniel Boone. 

While he was holding the Indians at bay in the 
Southwest, his compatriots of the border and the 
Army of Virginia were fighting the Ohio Indians led 
by Logan, the Mingo chief, and the famous 
Shawnee giant, Cornstalk. Their fighting cul- 
minated in the battle of Point Pleasant, West 
Virginia, on the loth of October. Cornstalk, with 
a thousand picked warriors, fell upon the eleven 



114 DANIEL BOONE 

hundred men of the Southwest, and, after one of 
the bloodiest battles in our history, suffered over- 
whelming defeat. With this victory for the colo- 
nists, the Shawnees and the Cherokees were humbled, 
and, save for a few alarms which Boone dispelled, 
Lord Dunmore's War was ended. 

On November 20, 1774, the hero of Clinch Valley 
received an honorable discharge after three months 
of warfare with the Indians by day and night. He 
had suffered privations and hardship in forts and 
forests, and many a time his life had hung in the 
balance. To those who may have hailed him with 
words of praise as he rode home, he probably 
nodded humbly, glad of any worthy achievement, 
yet feeling that risk and sacrifice were merely part 
of his duty. 

The Thanksgiving and Christmas seasons were 
celebrated with a truly grateful spirit in the cabin 
on the Clinch. And then Captain Daniel Boone 
went hunting ! 



CHAPTER XII 

Making the Wilderness Road 

A PHILOSOPHER once said, "If a man can write a 
better book or make a better mousetrap than his 
neighbor, although he build his house in the woods, 
the world will make a beaten track to his door." 

This was true of Daniel Boone. However much 
he might prefer solitude and the woods to society, 
his ability and knowledge of Kentucky were bound 
to be needed and sought. 

Colonel Richard Henderson was the most 
important man to search out Boone. He was an 
enterprising North Carolina lawyer of thirty-nine, 
who for some time had been turning over in his 
mind Boone's reports of the forest land beyond the 
mountains. He had been deprived of his judgeship 
by the political dissensions of the day, and had 
suffered money losses ; to him the West seemed to 
offer a fortune to any one bold enough to seize upon 
it. 

Relying entirely on Boone's information, he de- 
cided to establish a colony in Kentucky of which he 
should be the proprietor, as Penn had been in 



ii6 DANIEL BOONE 

Pennsylvania, and the sole one to sell titles to 
settlers. Nine citizens of North Carolina were 
found willing to risk money in the venture, and 
associated themselves with Henderson. 

Great secrecy was maintained, as they laid their 
plans, and, although the settlers surmised that 
Daniel Boone had something ''up his sleeve," 
nothing definite was known for weeks. He was 
seen to go freely back and forth between ''Snoddy's 
on the Clinch," the stockaded house of his friend 
John Snoddy, where he was staying, and the game 
lands of the Cherokees ; and at times two strangers 
were noticed with him. It was rumored that they 
were holding powwows with the red men. Then 
a train of ten wagons, filled with clothing, gay 
cloth, gaudy ornaments, arms, and the utensils 
of civilization, wound its way into the Watauga 
Valley, and six Indian chiefs came out of the forest 
and looked over the things. 

What did it all mean? 

On Christmas Day, 1774, the secret was pub- 
lished. "Richard Henderson for himself and Com- 
pany" advertised for ''settlers for Kentucky lands 
about to be purchased." The Transylvania Com- 
pany had been formed, it appeared, and they 
purposed founding a western commonwealth as 
soon as they could buy territory from the Cherokees, 



MAKING THE WILDERNESS ROAD 117 

the tribe holding the way between Virginia and 
the Carohnas and Kentucky. Their adviser and 
guide in these matters was Daniel Boone. He had 
been asked to negotiate with the Indians, to define 
the boundaries of the purchase, and to assemble the 
red men at a gathering in the Watauga Valley in 
the spring, where the transaction should be made 
and treaties signed. Indian runners were already 
hastening with the news among their settlements, 
at the command of their chief, Oconostota. 

These matters, however, were insignificant pre- 
liminaries for Boone. His great work was yet to 
be done. He was the one chosen to cut a road for 
this company through the wilderness. He was the 
one asked to select a site for the new community 
in Kentucky. 

The news was received with intense interest. 
Some settlers, however, condemned the project, 
asking if "Dick Henderson had lost his head." 
They all beHeved that the victory of Point Pleasant 
and the ensuing treaties had quieted the Indians 
for a time, and that the moment might be auspicious 
for Boone to carry out his long-cherished plan. 

The Royal Governors of Virginia and North 
Carolina knew that such a settlement in the West 
would be contrary to the wishes of the Crown, 
proclaimed in 1763. Governor Dunmore called 



ii8 DANIEL BOONE 

Henderson's association an ''infamous Company 
of Land Pyrates" ; and Governor Martin of North 
Carolina denounced the scheme as ''a lawless 
undertaking," and threatened the Transylvania 
Company "with the pain of His Majesty's dis- 
pleasure and the most rigorous penalties of the 
law." Boone and his associates, nevertheless, 
continued their plans. Once in the West, they 
knew that they would be too far away for England's 
officials to trouble them. 

Boone chose his road-makers, ''thirty guns" in 
all, each an enterprising backwoodsman and trained 
Indian fighter. They gladly accepted the work, as 
the terms for settlement in Kentucky, offered by the 
Transylvania Company, were generous. Squire 
Boone, Michael Stoner, and Boone's friends, Richard 
Calloway and David Gass, were among the pioneers. 

While they were gathering at Long Island, a 
picturesque spot in the Holston River, preparations 
were being made at Sycamore Shoals on the 
Watauga River for the reception of the Indians. 
There in the fertile valley, between the river and 
the foothills, twelve hundred Cherokees, who had 
been assembled by Boone, pitched their tents and 
wigwams, and made ready for the great council at 
which they expected to sell the territory which 
they claimed as ancestral hunting-ground. 



MAKING THE WILDERNESS ROAD 119 

Early in March the conference was opened with 
elaborate ceremony . Colonel Henderson and D aniel 
Boone, Nathaniel Hart, and John Luttrell repre- 
sented the Transylvania Company ; the spokesmen 
for the Indians were the lean and withered chiefs, 
Oconostota and Atta-Kulla-Kulla, and the warriors, 
Savanooko and Dragging Canoe. After days of 
discussion and oration, "the Great Grant" was 
signed. 

An immense tract, comprising more than half 
the present state of Kentucky and including a path 
thither from the east through Powell's Valley, was 
deeded to Henderson and his associates, for which 
they gave the Cherokees a small amount of British 
money and $50,000 worth of merchandise. The 
goods filled a large cabin and made a pleasing 
appearance. When they were divided, there was 
some grumbling. One red man, who received only a 
shirt as his share, said that it was foolishness to 
sell a hunting-ground which would bring him more 
money in a single day than the value of such a 
garment. On the whole, though, the transaction 
appears to have been carried on in good faith, and 
certainly the great feast, to which the Company 
treated the Indians at its close, was a gala affair, 
bound to put all the savages present in a good 
humor. 



I20 DANIEL BOONE 

The chiefs could not promise Boone a safe journey 
for his pioneers. They said: ^'A black cloud hangs 
over this land [meaning the enmity of the Northern 
tribes for white men who desired to own Ken- 
tucky]. Warpaths cross it from north to south, 
and settlers will surely get killed. For such results, 
the Cherokees must not be held responsible." 

One chieftain said, '' It is a fine land we sell to you, 
but I fear you will find it hard to hold." 

Nevertheless, Boone left Sycamore Shoals as soon 
as Henderson could spare his spokesman, and went 
directly to Long Island, where the roadmen were 
waiting. 

On March lo, 1775, the band was ready. The 
men, all mounted, were equipped with hatchets 
and axes, and armed for hunting rather than for 
fighting, as little trouble with Indians was antici- 
pated. Boone's daughter Susannah (Mrs. William 
Hays) accompanied her husband, the only woman 
of the party, save one colored woman. Pack horses 
and hunting-dogs made up the train. Felix 
Walker, a youth of the number, recorded the 
experiences of this historic band in a brief auto- 
biography. Of their departure, he wrote : 

"We then, by general consent, put ourselves 
under the management and control of Colonel 
Boone, who was to be our pilot and conductor 



MAKING THE WILDERNESS ROAD 121 

through the wilderness, to the promised land. Per- 
haps no adventurers since the days of Don Quixote, 
or before, ever felt so cheerful and elated in pros- 
pect. Every heart abounded with joy and excite- 
ment in anticipating the new things we could see, 
and the romantic scenes through which we must 
pass. . . . Under the influence of these impres- 
sions we went on our way rejoicing, with transport- 
ing views of our success, taking our leave of the 
civilized world for a season," 

Boone's own emotions, as he swung into his saddle 
and took his place at the head of the band, must 
have run high. At last he was bound for the land 
of his heart's desire. The outlook for success was 
bright and the compensation for his services was 
good. The work, for which he had been uncon- 
sciously training all the forty years of his active 
life, was now at hand. Opportunity and power 
had come. Grateful and confident he led away — 
and the Wilderness Road was begun ! Yet even 
Boone, in his brightest dreams and visions of the 
West, could not picture the importance of his 
undertaking. 

Boone planned to chop his way through the 
forests and canebrakes, to cut out the underbrush 
as he went along so that it might not overgrow the 
trail during the summer, and to blaze the distances 



122 DANIEL BOONE 

on mile- trees. Thus he would make the first 
regular and continuous road through the wilder- 
ness to the Kentucky River. He and his men pro- 
ceeded northward at once for Cumberland Gap, 
marking their track with hatchets. Having crossed 
the Clinch and Powell's rivers, they came down 
from the hills into that wild and beautiful defile of 
the Cumberland Mountains now so famous. By 
this time the Gap was famihar ground to Boone. 
When they had rested and enjoyed the scene, they 
passed on to Rockcastle River where they en- 
camped, the journey thus far having been unevent- 
ful save for the appearance of a fine bear which made 
them an excellent supper. Boone had laid his 
course along the hollov^^s of the hills, avoiding hard 
climbs whenever possible, and the trip up to this 
point had been an easy one for men accustomed to 
severe toil. 

The next twenty miles lay through a country 
covered with dead brush, and then followed thirty 
miles of thick canebrakes and reed. With the 
greatest difficulty they penetrated this region, as 
no progress could be made until the brush and cane 
had been chopped or burned away and a path 
opened. It was slow and weary work, but as they 
emerged from this tract they came into the restful, 
open lands of the Kentucky paradise. 



MAKING THE WILDERNESS ROAD 123 

''As the cane ceased," said Felix Walker, remem- 
bering his own youthful enthusiasm of the moment, 
''we began to discover the pleasing and rapturous 
appearance of the plains. A new sky and earth 
seemed to be presented to our view. So rich a soil 
we had never seen before, covered with clover in 
full bloom. The woods were abounding with wild 
game — turkeys so numerous that it might be said 
they appeared but one flock, universally scattered 
in the woods. It appeared that nature, in the 
profusion of her bounty, had spread a feast for all 
that lives, both for the animal and rational world. 
A sight so delightful to our view and grateful to our 
feelings, almost inclined us, in imitation of Colum- 
bus, in transport to kiss the soil of Kentucky, even 
as Columbus hailed and saluted the sand on his 
first setting his foot on the shores of America." 

On the night of March 25, they encamped by a 
stream known as Silver Creek, in the present Madi- 
son County, and only fifteen miles from the site 
which Boone had previously decided with Hen- 
derson to choose for the colony. They retired in 
good spirits and without fears ; the hardest of their 
road-making was passed, and their goal was near. 
Unfortunately, Boone posted no sentinels that 
night. A guard against savages seemed unneces- 
sary. The Indians of the Six Nations — Cayugas, 



124 DANIEL BOONE 

Onondagas, Oneidas, Senecas, Mohawks, and 
Tuscaroras — had already transferred their land 
east of the Ohio River to the king of England by 
the treaty of Fort Stanwix, New York, 1768. The 
Shawnees and other northwestern tribes had aban- 
doned their old grounds after the defeat at Point 
Pleasant, and rights to Cherokee territory had been 
bought at Sycamore Shoals. Yet Indian nature had 
not been changed by promises, defeats, or treaties. 

As the pioneers slept peacefully that night in the 
wilderness, which they now considered theirs, a 
band of red men closed in about them, and just 
before sunrise they were startled from their sleep 
by unearthly war-cries and shots. One man was 
killed instantly. Captain Twetty was mortally 
wounded, and Felix Walker so severely injured that 
for days his condition was critical. Several mem- 
bers of the band fled in fright, but the rest rallied 
about Boone, who ''appeared to possess firmness 
and fortitude,'^ — and the Indians vanished. 

The surprise might mean a general attack. To 
be on the safe side, Boone ordered his men to build 
a small stockade, and by nightfall they were secure 
behind its logs. Nothing happened for two days. 
Then the negro woman, while gathering wood out- 
side the fort, discovered a man behind a tree. She 
rushed to the stronghold, crying, "Indians!" 



MAKING THE WILDERNESS ROAD 125 

Colonel Boone instantly seized his rifle, ordered 
his men to conceal themselves, give battle, and not 
to run until they saw the savage fall. As they were 
ready to open fire, the lurking man stepped before 
them and proved to be one of the band who had 
fled on the night of the attack. 

This amusing episode was soon forgotten in the 
general melancholy occasioned by the death of Cap- 
tain Twetty that same day. In consequence, a 
number of the road-makers lost their courage, and, 
believing that sooner or later they all would suffer 
a similar fate, begged Boone to go home. Did any 
one, though, suppose that Daniel Boone would 
accept defeat in Kentucky a second time? He 
replied grimly that he would not return to the settle- 
ments. Felix Walker says that he appeared to 
have no fear and no thought of consequences, some- 
times even lacking sufficient caution for the enter- 
prise. But Boone had a purpose in life, and this 
purpose he was bound to fulfill. 

Fearing that his disheartened companions might 
desert him, on April i he dispatched a letter to 
Henderson, telling him of the reverses they had 
suffered and asking for help. 

^'My advice to you, Sir," he wrote, ''is, to come 
or send as soon as possible. Your company is 
desired greatly, for the people are very uneasy, 



126 DANIEL BOONE 

but are willing to stay and venture their lives 
with you." 

That day they packed up their baggage and 
began the last stage of their journey to Big Lick 
on the Kentucky River, just below the mouth of 
Otter Creek. Three or four men remained behind 
to care for Felix Walker, who, five days later, was 
placed in a Ktter and borne by two horses over the 
newly-marked course. The youth's wounds and 
suffering had touched the paternal heart of Boone, 
and he had ministered to the boy's needs as best 
he could. Walker says that Boone paid him 
"unremitting kindness, sympathy, and attention. 
. . . He was my father, my physician, and friend. 
He attended me as his child, cured my wounds by 
the use of medicines from the woods, and nursed 
me with affection until I recovered, without the 
expectation of reward. Gratitude is the only 
tribute I can pay his memory." 

From Silver Creek to Big Lick on the Kentucky 
River the buffaloes had worn a track, and along 
this well-marked ''street," as hunters sometimes 
called game-trails, Boone directed the remainder 
of his course. Road-building was now an easy 
matter, and the men made merry as they went 
along, enjoying the present and anticipating the 
future. As they were climbing a slight hill, just 



MAKING THE WILDERNESS ROAD 127 

before their journey's end, they heard with surprise 
and wonder a distant rumbling. Boone urged them 
to hasten to the summit, and there, looking down 
upon the rolling plains, they saw a sight astonishing 
to them. Just at that moment, between two and 
three hundred buffaloes of all sizes were turning 
away from Big Lick and crossing the Kentucky 
River — "some running, some walking, others 
loping slowly and carelessly, with young calves 
playing, skipping, and bounding through the plain." 

A lovely scene spread before them as they rested 
there on the brow of the hill. Beautiful bottom 
lands lay beneath them, watered by the clear stream 
which winked and sparkled on its course, and all 
the wild and fertile region seemed full of promise 
for those who were willing to plan and work. 
Boone surely had served them well. His Wilder- 
ness Road, winding behind them for two hundred 
miles, over mountain and through wastes, had 
indeed brought them to a paradise. Here, in the 
hollow at their feet, it was to end, and the new life 
of the West was to begin. 

Later, they went down into the plain. In a 
place finely suited for a camp, a level stretch shel- 
tered on one side by thick woods and bounded on 
the other by the open river, Boone ordered his men 
to halt. There the soil was firm and rich, and, 



128 DANIEL BOONE 

although very early spring, it was covered in places 
with fine white clover and the beautiful grass 
which was to be so widely known as Kentucky 
^'blue grass," and to prove such excellent fodder 
for Kentucky's famous horses. Nature began to 
blossom earlier in those days, before the forest had 
been cut away. Two springs welled up near the 
camp site; one a clear spring of fresh water, the 
other a sulphur spring which had saturated the 
ground with the salt of its waters. Four great 
trees, three sycamores and one huge elm, grew not 
far away. The white trunks of the sycamores, it 
is said, were worn smooth with the frequent rubbing 
of buffaloes on their way to and from the lick. The 
elm was especially admired by Henderson on his 
arrival. He said that one who saw it in all its glory, 
and who had a soul to appreciate it, must call it 
divine. Beyond the river, rolling slowly on its way 
beneath steep banks, lay woods and mountains. 
And in all directions reigned the wonderful stillness 
of the far-stretching wilderness. 

Daniel Boone looked about him. Step by step 
his thoughts traveled back over his hard-won road 
to the settlements. And in the settlements the 
thoughts of many men and women were traveling 
out into the wilderness after him and his men. 
Could Boone succeed against the odds of nature, 



MAKING THE WILDERNESS ROAD 129 

of savages and beasts, and build a road westward 
for them and their children? Would he persevere 
until the Transylvania colony rose in its fresh hope 
far beyond their mountains? Their faith in him 
was strong, but the task was a great one. Colonel 
Henderson afterwards admitted that *4t was owing 
to Boone's confidence in us and the people's in him 
that a stand was ever attempted." 

To Boone, standing on the bank of Kentucky 
River near Big Lick, and thinking of his severe 
trials and achievement and of the future's happy 
prospect, the wilderness seemed already won. 



CHAPTER XIII 

Boone's Settlement 

A GOOD hunter's meal and a long rest, wrapped in 
their skin blankets in the wilderness, and the road- 
makers were refreshed and ready for work. On 
April I, 1775, they began to chop and dig and to 
lay the foundation of the new West, while their 
brother colonists in New England were preparing 
for the fast approaching day when they would give 
the Red Coats ''ball for ball, from behind each 
fence and farm-yard wall," and drive England from 
the land forever. The pioneer band was build- 
ing the West ; the Eastern patriots were fighting 
for a free country to which they would annex the 
West when the power was theirs. 

Trees were cut and logs prepared for cabins "to 
be strung along the river bank" and for a small fort 
which they named Fort Boone. But when shelter, 
sufficient to protect them from the elements and to 
serve as a sKght defense against the Indians, had 
been built, the men gave little more heed to the 
fort. Like overgrown boys, they ranged the woods 
and plains, fascinated with the hunting and with 

130 



BOONE'S SETTLEMENT 131 

the choosing of lands for their new homes. Visions 
of wealth came to them with each fresh skin and 
hide and each new land-claim. The rough sur- 
veying of these pioneers, and of those who came 
later, made many compHcations, for, having no 
accurate maps, they could not tell where one claim 
began and another ended. Fortunately, no general 
Indian attack was made, although a small band of 
savages killed one of the pioneers on April 4. The 
responsibility of the undertaking rested with Boone, 
and naturally he was anxious that the fort should 
be completed. Yet he was glad that, for the time 
at least, his men appeared to have forgotten the 
recent tragedies and to be happy in the wilderness. 
While the others explored, he, being a surveyor as 
most settlers were, laid off the town-site into lots 
of two acres each. 

Meanwhile his messenger, sent from the camp on 
Silver Creek, was hurrying eastward to beg Hender- 
son to come at once. The young proprietor was 
already riding away from the settlements along 
Boone's trail, at the head of a spirited caravan. 
When wigwams and Indians had disappeared from 
the Watauga Valley, on the third day after the 
signing of the treaty of Sycamore Shoals, Hender- 
son's arrangements were completed, and forty 
mounted riflemen waited, ready for Transylvania. 



132 DANIEL BOONE 

The train that accompanied them was imposing — 
forty pack horses, a drove of cattle, a number of 
negro slaves, and several wagons, groaning under 
stores and provisions, garden seed, corn seed, 
ammunition, material for making gunpowder, and 
other necessities. In places, Boone's path was so 
narrow that the men needed to widen the way still 
more, and when the party had crossed Powell's 
Valley, they were forced to abandon their wagons 
entirely. 

As they were re-loading the pack horses and hid- 
ing surplus stores in the woods, Boone's messenger 
rode into their camp, with news of the Indian out- 
rage and of the fear of further attack. Consterna- 
tion prevailed, certain faint-hearted settlers turning 
back eastward at once. Henderson instantly 
realized that the fate of his colony hung in the bal- 
ance. At any moment Boone's companions might 
return home, refusing to risk their lives longer, and 
so bring an end to his dreams for Transylvania. As 
soon as possible word must reach Boone that he 
was on the way. He dispatched Captain Cocke, a 
fearless messenger, ''fixed off with a good Queen 
Anne's musket, plenty of ammunition, a tomahawk, 
a large knife, a Dutch blanket, and no small quan- 
tity of jerked beef and letters from home," to 
reassure the road-makers and their leader. 



BOONE'S SETTLEMENT 133 

Henderson followed as quickly as his large train 
would permit, and on April 20, according to his 
diary, after traveling for more than a month over 
Boone's road, which he found ''either hilly, stony, 
slippery, miry, or bushy," he and his riflemen 
arrived at Fort Boone, where they ''were saluted 
by a running fire of about twenty-five Guns, all 
that was then at the Fort." 

The men appeared in high spirits and much re- 
joiced at his arrival. An hour later, we are told, 
the entire company sat down to a feast of lean 
buffalo meat and cold water. No Thanksgiving 
dinner could have been eaten in a more grateful 
spirit. The hardships of the journey and anxiety 
for the colony were past for Henderson and his 
companions, and Boone and his pioneers now had 
the support they needed. 

With characteristic energy, Henderson at once 
discussed the situation with Boone, and together 
they wandered over part of the new property by 
the river. Boone showed the claims which his 
men had chosen — the choicest sites, of course, 
about the hollow. Henderson had planned to locate 
his little capital in the picturesque and sheltered 
level; but, finding the best land already taken 
by the road-makers, whom he could not deprive of 
it without losing their good will, and realizing also 



134 DANIEL BOONE 

that Boone's quarters would be too small for the 
colony's growing needs, he decided to build upon a 
slight elevation, about three hundred yards from 
the hollow and overlooking the Kentucky River. 

There, upon the little hill, about the time in 
April when Paul Revere was taking his famous 
ride, Boone laid out a fortified village which the 
pioneers appropriately named Boonesborough. The 
land was cleared, choppers ranged the woods for 
trees and transformed them into logs, timbers, 
clapboards, and puncheons, and the wilderness, 
so long quiet save for the sounds of nature, re- 
sounded with human activity, the bantering of 
men at work, and the plaintive songs of negroes, 
crooned for the first time in the West. 

Thirty cabins or more were ranged about a hollow 
square and protected by a log stockade in which 
there were two openings, one gate on the river side 
and the other toward the lick. A two-story block- 
house was built at each corner, the upper floor 
projecting in typical fashion, and in one of these 
Henderson made his headquarters. Portholes were 
placed in all the buildings. Boone appears to have 
planned also a small log magazine, which he built 
half underground and tried to make partially 
fireproof by a roof of clay. Henderson opened a 
store in a one-story cabin, the first shop in Ken- 



BOONE'S SETTLEMENT 135 

tucky, and the road-makers gathered there to re- 
ceive their pay in supplies, lead, powder, coarse 
linen, and other goods. Yet this station, although 
well-planned and well-begun, was not finished for 
months. When Indians were not seen, the men 
gave no thought to possible dangers and aban- 
doned their fort-building for more exciting pursuits 
in the woods. With a few exceptions, Boone's 
laborers, and many adventurers who followed, were 
crude, unlettered pioneers who felt little moral 
responsibility for the success of the West. Hen- 
derson, who had had social and educational op- 
portunities, spoke of them rather slightingly. 
The road-makers, however, had borne the hardships 
of chopping a way through the wilderness; now 
they wanted to reap their reward. 

May had already come, and spring beauty reigned 
in Kentucky. The Transylvania grant seemed 
prospering. By this time four settlements had 
been planted in the region — Boonesborough, 
Harrodsburg, Boiling Spring, and St. Asaph — and 
Henderson felt that the time had come to prepare 
for a convention at which a plan for the govern- 
ment of the colony by popular representation 
should be adopted and officers elected. In the 
name of the proprietors, he asked each little com- 
munity to elect members to a ^' House of Delegates 



136 DANIEL BOONE 

of the Colony of Transylvania," and send them to 
meet in the ''Capital" on the 23d of the month. 
Daniel and Squire Boone were two of the six chosen 
to represent Boonesborough. The other settle- 
ments selected four members each. On the Tues- 
day appointed, these twelve rode over to Boones- 
borough on their novel and important business. 

The small assembly was called to order under 
the great elm in the hollow. Henderson said : 
"The diameter of its branches from the extreme 
ends is one hundred feet, and every fair day it 
describes a semicircle on the heavenly green around 
it, of upward of four hundred feet, and any time 
between the hours of ten and two, one hundred 
persons may commodiously seat themselves under 
its branches. This divine tree is to be our church, 
state house, and council chamber." 

The delegates seated themselves, in a spirit of 
solemnity, on the white clover before a low plat- 
form erected at the foot of the elm, and the proceed- 
ings were opened by a minister from Harrodsburg 
who offered prayer. A presiding officer and clerk 
were elected, and then the proprietors — Hender- 
son, Hart, and Luttrell — having been waited upon 
by a committee, appeared before the assembly. 

Henderson addressed them dramatically and 
at length. He flattered them by declaring that 



BOONE'S SETTLEMENT 137 

''all power is originally with the people," and that, 
*4f prudence, firmness, and wisdom are suffered to 
influence your counsels and direct your conduct, 
the peace and harmony of thousands may be ex- 
pected to result from your deliberations." He 
warned them of dangers from Indians, suggested 
essential laws, and assured them that they had the 
right to make laws '' without giving offense to 
Great Britain or any of the American colonies, 
and without disturbing the repose of any society 
or community." A contract between the pro- 
prietors and the colonists was drawn up and signed, 
and the next day Henderson received full posses- 
sion of the land from the Cherokees, according to 
a pretty, ancient custom. The lawyer represent- 
ing the Indians handed Henderson a piece of 
Kentucky turf, and together they held it while the 
lawyer declared the transaction completed. 

The sessions continued for three days, and nine 
bills were passed. In this law-making, Daniel 
Boone was particularly active. He proposed a 
law for the protection and preservation of game, 
and served as chairman of the committee chosen to 
frame the law. The condition of the food supply, 
even so soon after the settlement of the wilderness, 
may be judged from Henderson's journal for May 9, 

1775: 



138 DANIEL BOONE 

"We find it very difficult to stop great waste in 
killing meat. Some would kill three, four, five, or 
half a dozen buffaloes and not take half a horse- 
load from them all. For want of a little obligatory- 
law, our game, as soon as we got here, if not before, 
was driven off very far. Fifteen or twenty miles 
was as short a distance as good hunters thought of 
getting meat, nay, sometimes they were obliged to 
go thirty, though by chance once or twice a week 
buffaloes were killed within five or six miles." On 
May 17, he wrote: 

*' Hunters not returned. No meat but fat bear- 
meat. Almost starved. Drank a little coffee and 
trust to luck for dinner. Am just going to our 
little plant-patches in hopes the greens will bear 
cropping ; if so, a sumptuous dinner indeed. Mr. 
Calloway's men got a little spoiled buffalo and 
elk, which we made out with pretty well, depending 
on amendment to-morrow." 

Boone gladly served on the game committee, as 
he was distressed to find animals, even in Ken- 
tucky, seeking western trails. 

Boone also proposed a law to improve the breed 
of horses. The early pioneers were horse-lovers, 
and, although they took with them comparatively 
few horses, the stock was good. They found that 
their animals flourished on the native blue grass, 



BOONE'S SETTLEMENT 139 

growing plentifully in the woods. Indeed, in later 
years, it has been maintained that the very bones 
of horses that have grazed upon Kentucky grass 
from infancy are harder than those of animals raised 
elsewhere. On account of the virtue of this grass, 
nurtured in Hmestone soil, and of the general in- 
terest of Kentuckians in horses, we now look to 
that state to furnish the finest horses our country 
can produce. Boone's short bill, introduced into 
the House of Delegates, proved to be an historic 
measure. 

On Sunday, following the close of the assembly, 
divine service was held in the shade of the great 
elm. The majority of the pioneers, however 
rough and uncultivated, were strong in the simple 
faith of their mothers. One of the bills which they 
had passed was ''an act to prevent profane swearing 
and Sabbath breaking." The British king and 
royal family were remembered in their prayers 
that Sunday morning, as was customary ; yet it 
proved to be the first and only service in Kentucky 
during which the ''most gracious Sovereign Lord, 
King George," was mentioned in the litany. The 
battles of Lexington and Concord had been fought 
five weeks before, and the struggle for independence 
was well begun. Within a week after this unique, 
open-air service in the wilderness, the belated 



I40 DANIEL BOONE 

eastern news reached Transylvania, and great was 
the enthusiasm among the far-away settlers. 

When the delegates had gone home and the 
unusual excitement of the House had subsided, 
the men of Boonesborough gave their attention to 
everyday life. The more restless, who had gone 
west for adventure rather than to build homes, 
began to sell their lots and go away. Others, like 
Boone, finished their houses for the families which 
they hoped to settle there; cultivated their gar- 
dens, where corn, peas, snap-beans, and cucumbers 
were thriving; and went hunting. Boone's chief 
desire was to complete the little log shelter in the 
hollow, and install Rebecca and the children there 
in safety. Finally, with the help of his men, it 
stood finished, and on Tuesday, June 13, 1775, 
according to Henderson's journal, ''Colonel Boone 
set off for his family and the young men went with 
him for salt.'' 

The detail of men were to ride as far as Martin's 
cabin in Powell's Valley, and to fetch the salt left 
there by Henderson when the narrowness of the 
trail forced him to leave his wagons behind. Salt 
was most important in the border settlements, as 
is seen by Henderson's entry of July 12 : 

"Our salt quite out except about a quart which 
I brought from Harrodsburg. The men, sent for 



BOONE'S SETTLEMENT 141 

salt, not yet returned, nor any news from the East. 
Times a little melancholy, provisions very scarce, 
no salt to enable us to save meat at any distance 
from home. . . . Weather very dry, and we not 
able to raise above fourteen or fifteen fighting men 
at any one time, unless they were all summoned, 
which could not easily be done without long notice, 
they being much dispersed, hunting, &c." 

Boone and his old neighbor, Richard Callo- 
way, went east together. Boone's family was at 
''Snoddy's on Clinch," the site of the present town 
of Castlewood, Russell County, Virginia, and the 
Calloways were also in a Virginia fort. For a 
second time, Rebecca Boone made the family ready 
for the journey to Kentucky. It must have been a 
proud and happy moment for her when she entered 
the road which her husband had planned and 
blazed. 

Besides the men who had gone east for salt, were 
a number of settlers bound for Harrodsburg, who 
returned with Boone. His own party consisted 
of thirty persons — ''twenty-one guns," it is said. 
Pack horses carried their household goods and pro- 
visions ; their cattle ambled along with them, and 
their dogs ran on ahead, scouring the strange forest 
eagerly. Boonesborough was watching for the 
party on September 8, as they emerged from the 



142 DANIEL BOONE 

tangled woods, and ^'all hands'* turned out towel- 
come them — and the salt ! 

Mrs. Boone and Jemima were, as Filson says, the 
first white women ^ "that ever stood on the banks 
of Kentucky river"; and they remained the only 
women in Boonesborough for three weeks. Then 
Colonel Calloway and his family and party arrived, 
adding three matrons and several young women to 
the settlement. 

At first the Boones made their home in a cabin 
in the hollow, but soon after they moved into the 
log fort on the little hill. Boonesborough's his- 
torian, George W. Ranck, says : 

"The influence of sunbonnets, though there were 
but a solitary couple of them, was soon seen. 
The men, especially the younger ones, immediately 
improved in appearance, for there was a sudden 
craze for shaving and hair-cutting. An ash- 
hopper, soap-kettle and clothes-lines were set up. 
Hickory brooms and homemade washboards multi- 
pHed. The sound of the spinning-wheel was heard 
in the land, and an occasional sight could be had of 
a little looking-glass, a patch-work quilt, knitting 
needles and a turkey-tail fan." The settlement 

^Mrs. Hays (Susannah Boone) had set out for the wilderness, 
when her father cut the road, but no further reference to her 
appears. 



BOONE'S SETTLEMENT 143 

was blessed with peace and good crops, and all 
seemed well. 

The spirit of liberty and equality, thrilling the 
Eastern colonists in their battles of the Revolution, 
was already stirring the wilderness settlers in Tran- 
sylvania. They were beginning to wish themselves 
free of their proprietors — a revolutionary idea 
which animated many discussions by cabin hearths. 
As the summer and autumn passed, various griev- 
ances arose to intensify this feeling. Between two 
and three hundred new settlers came to Transyl- 
vania during that time, expecting to pay reasonable 
sums for their lands, but the proprietors raised 
the previous selling prices exorbitantly. It was 
also discovered that Henderson and his associates 
had reserved for themselves and friends almost 
seventy thousand acres of the choicest land near 
the Falls of the Ohio. Goods and supplies at the 
Company's store at Boonesborough were high, and 
labor, hired by the Company, was poorly paid. An 
unexpected Indian attack, although slight, empha- 
sized their possible need of help and protection 
from Eastern settlers. Unhappiness spread until 
the Transylvanians decided to overthrow their 
proprietors and beg Virginia to admit the former 
Cherokee terricory as a county. 

While this opposition was brewing in their 



144 DANIEL BOONE 

colony, Henderson and Luttrell were on their way 
to North CaroHna to discuss Transylvania's situa- 
tion with their partners, as the colony's future 
looked somewhat dark. If they could influence 
the Continental Congress to admit Transylvania 
as the fourteenth state in the original Union, their 
right to sell the land would be established for all 
time, and their fortunes assured. They decided 
to appeal to the delegates ; but they appealed in 
vain. The Congress would not receive Transyl- 
vania under those terms. When the Declaration 
of Independence was proclaimed, there was no 
further hope for ''proprietors" in a country an- 
nouncing to the world that ''these United Colonies 
are and of right ought to be free and independent 
States." 

Meanwhile, the discontent of the Transylvania 
settlers had moved them to definite action. They 
drew up a resolution and sent it to the Virginia 
Convention, setting forth their desires. In De- 
cember, 1776, the State Legislature of Virginia 
granted this petition of the "inhabitants of Ken- 
tuckie." An act was also passed, defining the 
territory as Kentucky County, Virginia, and includ- 
ing within its boundaries the grant which Hender- 
son had bought from the Cherokees. A county 
government was organized, and Daniel Boone was 



BOONE'S SETTLEMENT 145 

appointed one of four captains for the region. 
Thus Transylvania passed into history, and the 
one-time proprietors of the seventeen million 
acres were proprietors no more. But the West, 
which had come into being over Boone's hard-won 
road, remained. 

The Virginians acted considerately. They 
realized and appreciated the efforts of the nine 
associates of the Transylvania Company. On 
November 4, 1778, the House of Delegates resolved 
that ^' as the said Richard Henderson and Company 
have been at very great expense in making the said 
purchase and settling the said lands — by which 
this Commonwealth is likely to receive great 
advantages, by increasing its inhabitants and 
establishing a barrier against the Indians — it is 
just and reasonable to allow the said Richard 
Henderson and Company a compensation for 
their trouble and expense." The Virginia General 
Assembly voted the proprietors a grant of two 
hundred thousand acres of land in Kentucky, and 
a similar grant later was made to them by North 
Carolina, which state embraced a portion of the 
former Indian hunting-ground. 

Boonesborough and the other communities of 
Kentucky County had little sympathy for their 
former proprietors in their loss. Perhaps Daniel 



146 DANIEL BOONE 

Boone alone, of all the settlers, held a warm place 
for them in his heart. Through Henderson, 
Boone's long-cherished dream of a home beyond 
the Alleghany Mountains had been realized, and 
he himself had become the proud possessor of a 
large tract of land in the wilderness, as the asso- 
ciates had recognized his part in their undertaking 
and rewarded it at their meeting in North Carolina 
in September. 

*' Resolved," their resolution read, ''That a 
present of two thousand acres of land be made to 
Colonel Daniel Boone, with the thanks of the Pro- 
prietors, for the signal services he has rendered to 
the Company." 

As Boone looked back over the year, he must 
have felt satisfied with the blossoming of the wilder- 
ness, and his share in its development. Many 
colonists of influence had made their way along his 
path, and had built and sowed in Kentucky. Over 
nine hundred entries of land, embracing five hun- 
dred and sixty thousand acres, had been made in 
the land office of Boonesborough. Orchards had 
been planted, two hundred and thirty acres of 
corn had been raised, and live stock, hens, and 
horses were increasing in number. Officials had 
been chosen to guard the people's welfare, and a 
militia had been organized to withstand Indian 



BOONE'S SETTLEMENT 147 

attack. Besides — and perhaps best of all — 
twelve mothers had come to Kentucky, and were 
exerting a precious influence in the wilderness. 
The beginning of the West was firmly established. 
Daniel Boone had made possible a wonderful 
enterprise. 



CHAPTER XIV 

"A Land Hard to Hold" 

On a Sunday afternoon in July, 1776, at the close 
of the usual Bible reading, Jemima Boone and 
Betsey and Fanny Calloway went canoeing on the 
Kentucky River. The day was warm and lazy, 
and the girls let their rough craft drift with the 
stream. The current bore them along pleasantly, 
and the girls chattered, as girls of fourteen and 
sixteen will, until their canoe swerved toward the 
opposite bank and floated along close to the bushes 
on the shore. They had a happy time with no 
fear, as Indians had not been seen about Boones- 
borough since winter. 

As it happened, however, Indians were at that 
moment watching them. Five young warriors — 
four from Shawnee towns and one Cherokee — 
had bedecked themselves with feathers and paint 
according to hideous, savage custom, and had come 
to Boonesborough to wreak their vengeance upon 
the settlers for the treaty which their chiefs had 
signed at the close of Dunmore's War. To steal 
the girls would make a good beginning. 

148 



" A LAND HARD TO HOLD » 149 

Suddenly a hand reached from the thicket and 
roughly seized the frail skiff — and the girls found 
themselves face to face with red men. The story 
goes that Betsey Calloway belabored one of the 
savages about the head with her paddle, while the 
other girls sat paralyzed with fear. The Indians 
pulled them to the shore and hurried them into the 
lonely woods, threatening them with the fatal 
tomahawk if they showed alarm or resistance. 
The savages set their customary swift pace, and the 
girls kept step with them, realizing that, if they 
lagged behind, their captors would not hesitate 
to kill them, even though they were girls. For- 
tunately for their fathers, they bethought them- 
selves of leaving a trail behind them, as if they were 
playing ''Hare and Hounds." They stepped 
heavily in the soft earth, broke away twigs, and 
tore off little pieces of their dresses and caught 
them on the bushes. Thus they were hurried 
farther and farther from home and ever nearer to 
the strange Shawnee towns on the Ohio. 

The afternoon passed in Boonesborough and 
milking time came. The daughters did not ap- 
pear. Instead, a hunter rushed into the inclosure 
with news of an empty canoe in the river and of 
tracks on the bank. Daniel Boone at once made up 
a rescue party of men on foot, while Colonel Callo- 



I50 DANIEL BOONE 

way gathered a company of horsemen, and the two 
bands set out in opposite directions. Calloway 
hoped to head off the Indians on their way home at 
Licking River, while Boone followed the slender 
trail through fields, woods, and canebrakes. 
Boone's party was particularly eager in this chase, 
as three of the members were in love with the three 
girls who had been so suddenly spirited out of sight. 
About thirty-five miles from Boonesborough, on 
the second day after the kidnapping, fragrant whiffs 
of burning wood and roasting meat were wafted 
to them, and through the tangle of foliage they 
caught the welcome sight of three young girls 
sitting on the ground not far from five Indian 
braves. They dashed upon the Indians, killing 
two Shawnees at once. The other savages fled, 
and the girls sped into the arms of their rescuers, 
safe and sound, but thoroughly frightened. 

This outrage proved to be only the beginning of 
fresh Indian hostilities. Fortunately, though, 
merry times came even to pioneers, and before 
fugitives from outlying settlements appeared in 
late July with news that the savages had again 
taken up the hatchet, Boonesborough had re- 
covered its composure and had celebrated the 
wedding of Betsey Calloway and the lover who had 
rescued her from the Indians. Daniel Boone, 



"A LAND HARD TO HOLD" 151 

like his father, had become a justice of the peace, and 
he performed the ceremony for them in a frontier 
cabin, made gay with the flickering Kght of buffalo- 
tallow candles and the strains of a wilderness 
fiddle. History records no wedding cake at this 
first marriage in Kentucky, but it does tell of water- 
melons for refreshment, the first grown in Boone's 
settlement. 

Following close on the heels of this gala time, 
came the news of the Declaration of Independence, 
and although belated, this first Fourth was cele- 
brated by the pioneers with jubilation. Logs 
and branches were dragged from the woods and 
piled high, and that night a huge bonfire flamed 
in the wilderness, like the ardent spirit of the em- 
pire-builders themselves, who were standing in its 

glow. 

From that patriotic celebration in 1776, until 
the close of 1777, Boonesborough and the other 
Kentucky communities were harassed by Indians 
and in almost constant anxiety and distress. The 
chieftain's warning to Boone at Sycamore Shoals 
became a reality. 

"Brother," he had said, "it is a fine land we 
sell to you, but I fear you will find it hard to hold." 

Plundering, burning, killing, and scalping, small 
bands of Shawnees swept through the ancient 



152 DANIEL BOONE 

hunting-ground, regardless of promises and treaties, 
and in July settlers from various parts of the region 
fled with a few belongings to the fort at Boones- 
borough and begged refuge. The fortifications 
were partially completed in haste and the heavy 
gates closed, to the great relief of the anxious 
settlers. Messengers were dispatched to Virginia, 
the Carolinas, and Pennsylvania, to beg help of 
those states which had sent many prominent 
settlers to Kentucky. Virginia sent a supply of 
powder to Boone, who was generally recognized as 
commander-in-chief, and also a pack-horse load of 
lead. Later a boat-load of powder came by way 
of the Ohio. But little more could be done for 
the forlorn Kentuckians, as Washington's army 
was demanding all supplies and reinforcements 
for the Revolution. 

Affairs continued to grow worse. The British, 
fully aroused to the imminent danger of losing their 
colonies, incited the Mingos and Cherokees as 
well as the Shawnees to make war upon the settlers, 
and the West became a battleground even as the 
East. Traveling in and out of the wilderness was 
extremely hazardous, and those pioneers who had 
not fled at the opening of hostilities were shut up 
in their little forts. Bloodthirsty savages en- 
dangered their stockades or hid in ambush to fall 



"A LAND HARD TO HOLD" 153 

upon and scalp any one who dared to leave the 
fort for water or fresh meat. The colonists, 
huddled within the inclosures, discouraged and 
often hungry, were shut off from any communica- 
tion with the home settlements, and frequently 
sieges were so well planned by the Indians that 
different forts were attacked simultaneously and 
their garrisons rendered unable to assist one another. 
The savages intended to reduce the men and women 
to starvation, wipe out their hated settlements, 
and let the wilderness become itself again. 

Boone was constantly on the alert, encouraging 
flagging spirits and exerting himself to the utmost 
to keep food on hand in the forts. It became his 
custom to set out on his hunting expeditions after 
dark and to return before morning. Indians were 
usually secreted in the trees and bushes about 
Boonesborough and every precaution was neces- 
sary. 

Late in April, a band of fifty or a hundred 
Shawnees skulked through the woods, planning to 
entrap Boone and his men this time without doubt. 
The majority hid themselves in the long grass, 
while a mere handful sallied toward the fort, 
hoping to induce the settlers to come out and 
pursue them. For some strange reason, Boone did 
exactly as they wished. He rushed out of the 



154 DANIEL BOONE 

gate, his garrison after him, and ran headlong 
into the band, lying silently and gleefully in am- 
bush. A terrible struggle ensued. Several settlers 
were seriously wounded, among them Boone him- 
self, whose leg was broken by a bullet. He fell, 
and an exultant warrior, hooting madly with joy, 
rushed to him, intending to bear off his scalp. Had 
it not been for Simon Kenton, a young man of 
Boonesborough, whose brilliant deeds of prowess 
have made his name memorable, Boone's service 
to his country surely would have ceased on that 
April day, and the history of the Western settle- 
ments would have been very different. In an 
instant Kenton shot the Indian through the heart, 
seized Boone, and, fighting his way through the 
maddened savages, bore him in safety to the fort. 
Intrusting his honored chief to Mrs. Boone and 
others, Kenton rushed back to continue his deadly 
work until the Indians were driven into the forest. 

When Boone was resting as comfortably as could 
be expected with so painful a wound, he sent for 
Kenton, and in his simple, quiet way said, ''Well, 
Simon, you have behaved like a man — you are a 
fine fellow." 

Kenton's fame spread, as a word of praise from 
such a man as Boone, who held the fate and welfare 
of the colonies in his keeping, was very precious. 



"A LAND HARD TO HOLD" I55 

Boone's wound confined him to his cabin for 
several months, and the Httle house became a 
veritable "Army Headquarters." From his bed- 
side Boone gave directions for the details of sieges, 
even for the aiming and firing of rifles, as his knowl- 
edge of wily Indian ways was supreme. His 
patience and unselfishness during this period of 
suffering made his fellow-settlers appreciate still 
more the natural greatness of their leader. 

The Indians did not again attack the fort in 
large numbers until the Fourth of July, 1777, al- 
though they kept it in continual peril and on the 
point of starvation. Then, two hundred sav- 
ages hid in ambush as before and tried to fool 
the garrison a second time. But the twenty 
settlers wisely kept within their stockade and for 
two days fired incessantly, in a brave attempt to 
beat off the greater enemy and to save their fort 
from burning. The women stood their ground as 
bravely as the men, loading rifles, melting pewter 
plates into bullets, and serving as marksmen when 
they were not cooking economically the Httle food 
on hand or nursing the wounded. 

On the sixth of the month, the Indians withdrew 
with their dead, considerably worsted and dis- 
couraged with their ill luck — and a Httle good 
cheer came again to the settlers. How deHcious 



156 DANIEL BOONE 

to them was the cool water from the spring outside 
the gate, which now stood open, and how welcome 
the fresh meat brought in by hunters from the 
forest! A horseman immediately left for the 
East to beg sorely-needed aid, while the settlers 
waited in great want. Ammunition became so 
scarce that little hunting was allowed, and turnips, 
corn, potatoes, nuts, and wild grapes were their 
only food. 

The Indians haunted the region, although they 
made no general attack again that year, watching 
and planning for the future. The last of July, 
Shawnees, resting on a hill near the hollow, were 
terrified at the sight of forty-eight horsemen ad- 
vancing from the woods toward Boonesborough. 
They fled, reporting to their tribe that two hundred 
*' Long-knives" had come West. The men proved 
to be a band of Yadkin settlers, under Colonel 
Bowman, come to aid Boone. In the autumn 
one hundred more Virginians arrived, and later 
still, twelve sharpshooters appeared, guarding pow- 
der and lead securely fastened on the backs of 
four pack horses. Life became easier for a time, 
yet ammunition and salt again ran low before the 
Old Year ended. 

Conveniences and comforts in their wilderness 
homes had increased. ''Most of the cabins," 



"A LAND HARD TO HOLD" 157 

Mr. Ranck says, ''were provided with a slab- 
table; a feather bed or a buffalo one; hickory 
chairs with deerskin seats; iron pots, ovens and 
skillets ; big and little gourds, which served many 
purposes from dippers to egg-baskets, and were used 
to hold everything from cornmeal and soft soap 
to maple sugar. Bucks' antlers and wooden 
pegs held rifles, powderhorns and fishing-poles, 
sunbonnets and saddlebags, bundles of dried herbs, 
strings of red pepper, and ' hands ' of tobacco. A 
shelf over the fireplace was reserved for medicine, 
tinder box, ink bottle, quill pens, the Bible, an 
almanac and a few other books, which in some 
cabins included 'Pilgrim's Progress' and the plays 
of Shakespeare." 

Every now and then news of the progress of the 
fight for independence reached them, news as 
cheering to Western settlers as to Eastern patriots. 
In November they heard of the victories of Saratoga 
and Bennington and of the capture of one third of 
the entire British force in the colonies. They 
pictured the prisoners marched off by American 
officers bearing the Stars and Stripes, which had 
just been adopted as the national flag. Again a 
bonfire roared and flamed in celebration, and each 
cabin within the barred stockade glowed with 
candles and hearth fires. 



158 DANIEL BOONE 

Some critics have belittled Daniel Boone's 
achievements because he played no part in the 
American Revolution. It is true that he fought 
in no battle in the East, but all the War for In- 
dependence was not waged on the seacoast. Boone 
fought the Indians — and the Indians were the 
allies of the British. If Boone had not kept them 
busy, fighting and fleeing, they would have been 
able to swoop down upon the Eastern settlements 
and aid their English instigators who supplied them 
with arms and ammunition. 

The years 1776 and 1777 were hard for Daniel 
Boone, but his toil and suffering were not in vain 
in the service of his country. 



CHAPTER XV 

Boone becomes an Indian 

Gunpowder and salt ! Without the one, the 
pioneers of Kentucky County could not hunt; 
without the other, they could not preserve the game 
they killed. With the Indians warring all about 
them, they were unable to procure these two neces- 
sities from the East, and consequent starvation, 
as Eugene Field says, forever threatened to ''wipe 
them slowly out of sight." During the year of 
darkness, 1777, Uttle corn had been raised, and in 
December of that year only two months' supply 
of bread was on hand for two hundred women and 
children besides the men. 

The settlers decided that they could make their 
own salt at the salt springs of the various buffalo 
licks in the region, if they had suitable kettles in 
which to boil and evaporate the salty water. Vir- 
ginia sent out several great iron receptacles, and, 
as the Indians seldom raided in the winter, prepara- 
tions were begun in the New Year, 1778, for the 
making of the much-needed salt at once. 

Two bands of salt-makers were chosen ; Captain 

1S9 



i6o DANIEL BOONE 

Watkins and his few visiting militiamen, at that 
time helping in the defense of the wilderness, formed 
one company ; and Daniel Boone and thirty resi- 
dents from the three forts, the other. These two 
divisions were to take turns. On New Year's 
Day Boone and his men fastened the kettles on the 
horses, together with fodder, meal, and axes, and 
set out in severely cold weather for Lower Blue Lick. 
Special work was assigned each man. Some built 
and tended the fires; some drew water from the 
salt springs; others watched the boiling process 
and the salt crystals appearing in the bottoms of 
the kettles, and still others scoured the woods for 
game. Boone served not only as leader of his 
party, but also as a scout and hunter, keeping on 
the watch for Indians and bringing in meat for his 
hungry men. The making of salt, with their 
crude arrangements and in cold weather, was a 
long task. From five hundred to eight hundred 
gallons of the salt water had to be evaporated to 
make a bushel of salt. When the water had boiled 
away, the salt crystals were emptied into sacks and 
stored in a dry place. Some of it was sent at once 
to the settlement on pack horses and under the 
guard of several men, but the greater part of it 
was hoarded in the camp. More than a month 
passed peacefully in this activity. 



BOONE BECOMES AN INDIAN i6i 

As Boone and his horse were making their way 
back to the shelter through a great, swirling, 
bHnding snowstorm in the evening dusk of February 
7, bearing a load of buffalo meat and beaver skins 
from the forest, four painted Shawnee braves rose 
out of the buried thicket and confronted him. In- 
stantly he dropped the horse's halter and sped 
through the snow, dodging behind trees and circHng 
in his course, hoping to outwit and outrun the sav- 
ages. But in spite of his swiftness, the Indians over- 
took him and led him away, a bound captive, to 
their camp, where their chief, Black Fish, and one 
hundred and twenty warriors welcomed him loudly. 
^' Brother," they called him in mock friendship, and 
he returned their salutations with feigned good 
humor. Their joy at having at last caught this 
renowned Indian-fighter was unbounded, and those 
Shawnees from whom he and Stewart had escaped 
on a dark night eight years before slapped him on 
the back with satisfaction. 

They told him that they intended to attack and 
burn Boonesborough, but that they wished him 
first to lead them to his salt-makers and their camp. 
Knowing Indian nature as well as he did, Boone 
felt sure that when the savages once had these men 
in their power, they would be so elated that they 
would want to postpone the assault upon the settle- 

M 



1 62 DANIEL BOONE 

ment and return in triumph to parade their captives 
in their villages beyond the Ohio. Boone believed 
that the surrender of his comrades would save 
Boonesborough, for a time at least. The wily 
Shawnees promised to treat the settlers kindly, 
and Boone agreed that he and his men would be 
docile. He suggested that, after they had spent 
the winter together, they might return to the settle- 
ments and bear off the women, girls, and boys, and 
either become adopted children of the Indians or sur- 
render themselves to the British governor, Hamilton, 
at Detroit, who was offering £20 for each American 
prisoner deUvered to him ahve and well. The colo- 
nists called Hamilton ''the hair-buying general." 
These suggestions, of course, were pure strategy on 
Boone's part to put off the fatal day for the families 
at Boonesborough as long as possible. Perhaps, 
while the winter was passing, help from Virginia 
would come. 

The next day Boone led the Indians through the 
snow-draped forest to his salt-makers, who were 
persuaded that the sacrifice, which their leader 
asked of them, was necessary. For two hours the 
Indians haggled in council concerning the prisoners, 
as some of the braves, in spite of promises of kind- 
ness, wanted to torture them to death or burn them 
at the stake. Boone's assuring address to them, 



BOONE BECOMES AN INDIAN 163 

which a negro named Pompey interpreted, and the 
advice of Chief Black Fish, persuaded the savages 
to save the white men for the British governor's 
money. Accordingly, the camp equipment was 
packed on horses, the salt destroyed, and the 
settlers^ marched away northward to the Ohio, 
through heavy snow and biting cold. With despair 
they thought of their wasted salt, so greatly needed, 
and each bushel worth in itself a cow and calf and 
considerable Colonial money. 

What a terrible journey they experienced ! Ex- 
tremely cold weather prevailed, and game was so 
scarce that the Indians were obliged to kill some of 
their dogs and horses or subsist on slippery elm 
bark. They kept their prisoners as well fed as 
possible, as they wished to present healthy speci- 
mens of manhood to Governor Hamilton, and so 
be assured of their reward. For ten days they 
struggled through the drifted trails. They crossed 
the Ohio in a raft made of buffalo hides, and came 
at last to the "trace" leading to the Little Miami 
River, where Shawnee huts and wigwams nestled 
in the snow. 

Great excitement prevailed when Chief Black 
Fish and his captives entered the town of Little 

iThe captives numbered twenty-seven; the others were ab- 
sent from the camp, hunting. 



1 64 DANIEL BOONE 

Chillicothe. All the Indians and their squaws 
and dogs came running out to view the prisoners, 
and Boone proved a gracious visitor, realizing that 
the fate of his comrades depended in large measure 
on the good humor in which he kept the savages. 
The pioneers were assigned to different wigwams, all 
more or less smoky and ill-smelling, and were fed 
with the Indians' usual winter food — beans, 
hominy, pumpkins, corn, and game, generally 
cooked together in the same kettle. Boone's 
comment on his food and lodging was simply that 
it was ^'not so good as I could desire but necessity 
made everything acceptable." 

The Shawnees dressed in usual Indian costume — 
shirts, coats made of match-cloth, leggings, and 
moccasins. They wore heavy silver plates about 
their arms, above and below their elbows, and 
often jewels in their noses. The squaws did not 
cut the rims of their ears, as did the men, but they 
hung great silver rings in them. The women wore 
many silver brooches pinned to their undergar- 
ments, blankets, and leggings. Painted decora- 
tions, of course, were common, the squaws using 
only spots on their cheeks. 

The Shawnees entertained their guests with their 
usual winter pastimes. By day there was hunting. 
Sometimes in the evening they played cards, which 



BOONE BECOMES AN INDIAN 165 

Indian missionaries said the French had taught 
them, but they preferred to dance and sing. Al- 
most every night they danced to weird sounds 
until twelve o'clock. Their chief musical instru- 
ment consisted of a skin stretched over a keg. This 
was beaten with a stick by one musician, while an- 
other shook a gourd filled with grains of corn. 

Soon after their arrival Boone and sixteen of his 
companions, who were strong and well-built, were 
adopted into the tribe, and by a rather severe cere- 
mony were supposed to be changed at once into full- 
fledged Shawnees, enjoying the racket and slovenly 
life of a wigwam. The hair of the white man's 
head was pulled out, except a tuft on the crown, 
which was left long and tied with ribbons. He was 
then washed and rubbed in the river ''to take all 
his white blood out," and after an address of wel- 
come in the council, he was painted and feasted 
in elaborate, savage fashion. 

Just how many of these initiation details Boone 
was forced to undergo, we do not know. History 
only records that he was deemed so precious and 
popular a captive that he was adopted by Chief 
Black Fish himself and christened Sheltowee, which 
meant ''Big Turtle." He entered into the life of 
his new "father" and "mother" with apparent 
pleasure — for Boone could conceal his real feelings 



1 66 DANIEL BOONE 

as well as a genuine Indian — and gave them meat 
and skins with mock affection. He watched his 
"father" and the other warriors, endeavoring to 
learn all their arts and ways, for he knew that some 
day he must try to escape and make his way back 
alone to save the settlement which was as dear to 
him as a child. 

When contests were held, he concealed his own 
skill. He did not want the savages to gauge his 
ability nor to become jealous of him. Some of his 
comrades, however, were less tactful in their rela- 
tions with their captors and suffered many punish- 
ments in consequence. The most severe were 
whipping and running the gantlet. For the latter 
performance, the Indians formed two lines five or 
six feet apart, and ordered their prisoner to run 
between them, while they belabored him with 
clubs, tomahawks, and switches. Early in Boone's 
captivity he had been subjected to this ordeal, but 
as a test of his prowess rather than as a punishment, 
and by artfully dodging and butting with his head, 
he had escaped with Httle harm. For some, this 
proved a disastrous or even fatal experience. 

Toward the last of March the salt-makers of 
Boonesborough were marched off by Black Fish and 
by many braves and squaws to Governor Hamilton 
at Detroit for the promised ransom. The arrival 



BOONE BECOMES AN INDIAN 167 

of so famous a Colonial fighter as Daniel Boone 
was welcomed by the English official, who sent for 
him at once. Now Boone could be as crafty as 
any one — and he did not hesitate to try his cun- 
ning with this representative of the Enghsh king. 
He always wore about his neck a little leather bag 
containing his commission as captain in the British 
forces in Lord Dunmore's War. Boone handed 
this to the governor, at the same time repeating his 
former promise to the Indians to surrender Boones- 
borough in the spring. Governor Hamilton was 
deceived by Boone's simplicity into beheving that 
this quiet backwoodsman was still in sympathy with 
King George across the sea. He was so pleased 
with Boone that he offered £100 to Black Fish in 
ransom, but the ''foster father," counting upon 
Boone's services as guide to the Kentucky settle- 
ments, cunningly said that he loved his ''son" too 
much to sell him. So the governor sent them away, 
giving Boone a pony, saddle, bridle, and blanket, 
and a string of silver trinkets to be used as money 
among his Indian "brothers." 

Meanwhile, five hundred warriors — Mingos, 
Delawares, and Shawnees — had gathered in Chilli- 
cothe, decked out in war gear and full of plans for 
the raid into Kentucky soon to be made. Boone 
listened to their chatter at the fires. From the few 



1 68 DANIEL BOONE 

Shawnee words which he had learned, he gathered 
their purpose in full. They intended to sweep 
through Kentucky County and destroy Boones- 
borough. With a sinking of his heart, he heard the 
terrible news. Now must he rise to the noblest in 
him; now, if ever, was the time for him to save 
his people. Could he do it? One lone settler 
against five hundred savages and a wilderness ? 

On the 1 6th of June he escaped. Just how he 
got away no one knows. One story says that, 
having made ready his arms, the powder and bullets 
he had been saving for four months, his scalping- 
knife and moccasins, he asked permission to go 
hunting, and so sped away. Another story says 
that, while he was boihng salt for his ^^ father,'' 
Black Fish, a flock of wild turkeys absorbed the 
attention of his keepers, and he chose that moment 
to shp into the forest. However he escaped, he 
began to run at once with all possible speed and 
strength southward. At any moment the Indians 
might miss him and follow. 

Every trick known to the forest hunter he used 
to conceal or confuse his course. He circled in his 
path, set blind and false trails, waded in water, 
swam streams, although he was a poor swimmer. 
Hope and fear impelled him ever onward by day 
and night. He was hungry ; he was tired and sore 



BOONE BECOMES AN INDIAN 169 

and bleeding with many bruises. But what was 
his own comfort or distress at such a time? He, 
Daniel Boone, was out to race with death — death, 
which, if it overtook him, would also claim his 
people. 

For two days he ate nothing. He dared not stop ; 
he dared not kill game, for fear of his pursuers 
or of chance Indians camping in the forest. At 
Blue Licks, on the third day, he ate a bit of buffalo 
meat — and then he was up and off again, hasten- 
ing, tattered and exhausted, to his settlement. 

On the evening of the fourth day, or the morning 
of the fifth, after he had run one hundred and sixty 
miles through the wilderness, he staggered into 
Boonesborough, and shouted to the settlers his 
precious warning — 

"Indians! Finish your stockade!" and sank 
down. 

"Big Turtle" was no more — but Daniel Boone, 
noble and self-sacrificing, was safe and sound. 
And so was Boonesborough. 



CHAPTER XVI 

The Siege of the Shawnees 

With cries of joy and intense relief, the despairing 
settlers rushed across the inclosure toward the gate 
in which their exhausted leader appeared, like one 
arisen from the dead. They helped him to a cabin 
and there fed him and dressed his wounds, and 
showered him with questions. Where had he 
been these four long months? How did he make 
his way back? Did the Indians chase him? 
When would they attack the settlement? What 
had happened to the other salt-makers? Were 
they all alive and well ? 

They told him of their great distress when the 
empty salt-camp had been found, and of their grief 
as days slipped by and not one of the salt-makers 
came home. Twenty-seven was a large number to 
vanish in a moment from the little fort. Day after 
day they had waited in vain for news, and many^ 
completely discouraged in their bereavement and 
reduced to abject poverty, had packed up in the 
spring and sadly left Boonesborough to return to 
relatives in the East. 

170 



THE SIEGE OF THE SHAWNEES 171 

And Mrs. Boone and the children? Perhaps 
Boone sensed his loss as he neared Boonesborough 
and so in a way was prepared for the news that his 
wife and his girls and boys — except Jemima, who 
had married Richard Calloway, her rescuer from 
the Indians — had gone to the Bryan homestead 
in the Yadkin Valley. In spite of her great faith 
in her husband's ability, his long absence convinced 
Rebecca that at last the savages had outwitted him, 
and that he had suffered death in the forest, as had 
her boy. Bravely, but bowed with a widow's 
grief, she had made ready to go to her old home, over 
the forest road which her husband had blazed and 
which he and she had traveled together with high 
hopes. Boone longed to follow her, to comfort 
her and to be comforted, but he knew that for the 
present he must stay in the wilderness and fight 
for Boonesborough. Let us hope that Jemima 
Boone Calloway took her lonely father into her 
new home and made him happy. 

Busy times followed Boone's arrival. He 
ordered the men at once to repair and complete the 
fortress which, in spite of danger, had been 
neglected, and in ten days all was secure and ready 
for the onslaught of the foe. Boone sent to the 
Hols ton settlements in Virginia for help, and kept 
spies scouting the country to warn the settlement 



172 DANIEL BOONE 

of the savages' approach. But no Indians were 
discovered; they appeared to have postponed 
their attack. 

In the summer came news that Black Fish and 
his warriors were again hstening to the entreaties of 
Governor Hamilton to attack ''the rebels of Ken- 
tuck." Boone concluded that it might be well to 
alarm the Indians by appearing suddenly in their 
country as if he and his intrepid men were part of 
a great force in readiness to attack the Indian 
towns, instead of the mere handful of seventy-five 
''guns" there, including men, boys, and certain 
women fighters. In the middle of August, Boone, 
Simon Kenton, and nineteen sharpshooters pene- 
trated to Paint Creek, not far from Chillicothe, 
where they came upon thirty Shawnees, traveling 
to join the great war party under Black Fish. The 
settlers charged them with success. The Indians 
fled, leaving behind as booty their horses and bag- 
gage. Boone wheeled at once and made off for 
the fort, and luckily, too, for had he continued his 
progress he would have met the warriors under 
Black Fish, on their southward advance. The 
heavy gates of Boonesborough closed upon the 
gallant little band only a few hours before four 
hundred Shawnee warriors, the largest army ever 
gathered to make war upon the tiny settlement, 



THE SIEGE OF THE SHAWNEES 173 

encamped among the trees and bushes along the river 
bank near the fort. They came m the evening and 
the uneasy pioneers passed another sleepless night. 

Betimes the next morning, every porthole was 
filled with settlers eager for a glimpse of the savage 
enemies. If torture and slow death had not faced 
them, they might have found pleasure in the pic- 
turesque sight. Through the little openings they 
could see feathered scalp-locks and half-naked 
bodies, fantastically painted. Governor Hamilton 
kept the Indians supplied with the paint they so 
dearly prized. In his report for this very Sep- 
tember, he said that among the goods received by him 
for the Indian department were ^'eighty pounds 
of rose-pink and five hundred pounds of vermilion." 

These gorgeous warriors were commanded by 
Black Fish, assisted by the veteran fighters, Black 
Bird, Black Hoof, and Moluntha, and also a French- 
Canadian of the Detroit militia. Under the latter 
were forty French-Canadians who had brought 
with them their British and French colors and were 
flying them derisively before the fort. When the 
garrison discovered the militia, trained in war 
tactics such as no Indian knew, their fear was 
redoubled. Now indeed might their stockade fall 
before the well-planned attack of genuine fighting- 
men. 



174 DANIEL BOONE 

The settlers looked and waited in suspense. 
They expected the savages to assail them at once, 
but no hostile demonstration occurred. Instead, 
an armed messenger of the Indians, who spoke 
English, stepped from the thick covert and ad- 
vanced toward the fort, bearing a white flag of 
truce which fluttered in the breeze. 

Mounting a stump before one of the blockhouses, 
he cried, '^Holloa!" 

The prolonged call echoed and then died away 
among the trees. No answer came from the fort. 
Why should the little garrison betray by haste any 
undue concern in the movements of its tawny foes ? 

*' Holloa!" cried the messenger again, and then 
some one in the blockhouse answered. 

The truce-bearer said that he had letters to 
Captain Boone from Governor Hamilton and that 
the Indian chiefs desired to talk over the con- 
tents with him. Boone gladly welcomed any pro- 
ceedings which would delay hostilities, as the help 
from Virginia might arrive at any time. He con- 
sented, but only on condition that the Indian- 
representatives should come unarmed and that the 
letters should be discussed under the guns of the 
fort. Black Fish agreed, and came with Lieutenant 
De Quindre and Moluntha, bringing the letters 
and seven roasted buffalo tongues as a token of 



THE SIEGE OF THE SHAWNEES 175 

good faith. The starving settlers mightily en- 
joyed the meat. Daniel Boone, Richard Calloway, 
Senior, and William Bailey Smith, carrying only a 
pipe and a white handkerchief, met the chiefs and 
the French-Canadian ofhcer — an embarrassing 
meeting for Boone and his Indian '^ father." 

In the letters Governor Hamilton ordered Boone 
"to surrender the fort in the name of his Britannic 
Majesty," at the same time offering terms so liberal 
that he felt assured they would move the settlers 
to welcome release from their hardships. Black 
Fish himself said that "he had come to take the 
people away easily, that he had brought along 
forty horses for the old folks, women, and children 
to ride." 

Boone replied that he could not answer these 
propositions without consulting his men, and 
formally begged for a two days' truce. Thus 
Boone arranged for another precious delay. 

Of course, the plucky pioneers flatly refused to 
yield to the overtures of "the hair-buying general." 
In spite of the gloomy outlook, they were en- 
couraged by the preparations of the Indians for 
transporting a large band of prisoners to Detroit. 
Evidently the savages had no knowledge of their 
small numbers and real weakness. They voted to 
a man to decline the offer and to continue to pray 



176 DANIEL BOONE 

that Virginia's aid would come in time to save them. 
They at once set to work to make the most of the 
two days' truce. They molded bullets, cleaned 
rifles, apportioned powder, gathered vegetables, 
drew water from the spring outside the fort under 
cover of darkness, cooked extra food, brought in 
their cattle, inspected the stockade, and rehearsed 
their plans and orders for carrying on a protracted 
siege. The Indians meanwhile spent two lazy 
days before the fort, confident of success. 

At the proper hour the white flag was again 
brought out, and Black Fish and his supporters 
advanced through the evening dusk to the fort. 
Captain Boone had taken his position in one of the 
bastions and, when the chief was standing below 
him in motionless Indian fashion, he announced 
the decision of the little garrison. 

*'We are determined," he said, "to defend the 
fort while a man is living." 

Black Fish was astonished ! It is said that he 
wept copiously over such a thankless answer from 
one whom he had made his "son," but without 
doubt the tears were shed for dramatic effect. 
Neither Black Fish nor the other commanders had 
supposed for a moment that the settlers would offer 
further resistance. They were firm, however; 
another stratagem must be tried. 



THE SIEGE OF THE SHAWNEES 177 

• 
Lieutenant De Quindre then took the floor. He 

said that the British governor had ordered them to 
avoid bloodshed, and if the settlers would sign a 
treaty swearing allegiance to Great Britain, he 
and all his Indians would leave them quietly and 
in full possession of their fort. Would not nine 
representatives meet with him for the purpose of 
drawing up such a treaty? If the garrison would 
consent to so simple a matter, the whole affair 
might be quickly settled and peace return. 

Although Boone's intuition warned him that the 
Indians meant treachery, he acquiesced, as the 
proceedings would postpone open warfare yet 
again. Early the next morning, he and eight 
others from the fort joined De Quindre, Black Fish, 
Black Bird, Black Hoof, and Moluntha, under the 
great elm in the hollow. They were seated on 
panther skins and deerskins and invited to smoke, 
drink, and eat, while the warriors sat about them 
on the ground. Every man, woman, and child of 
the garrison was doing picket duty and peering 
through all available openings, anxiously and per- 
haps enviously, since their leaders were enjoying a 
good meal at the expense of the British government. 
They were ready to open fire upon the Indians at 
a given signal, the waving of a hat, should trouble 
arise. This powwow lasted throughout the day. 

N 



1 78 DANIEL BOONE 

By evening the pioneers had agreed to sign a treaty 
the following day, promising to fly a British flag 
above their fort as a symbol of their loyalty to the 
British Crown. 

Stealthily through the woods that night, quite 
unsuspected by the settlers, crept a detail of the 
Indians who secreted themselves behind trees and 
in the undergrowth about the hollow. In the morn- 
ing Boone and his companions accompanied Black 
Fish to a table under the historic elm, unconscious 
of the savage eyes intent upon them, although the 
garrison on the hill was ready for any emergency. 
The treaty was signed in mock sincerity, and then 
Black Fish casually remarked, ''Now a hand shake 
all around to confirm this treaty, two braves to each 
white brother.'' 

But the Indians betrayed themselves. They 
grasped the hands offered them so tightly that the 
shrewd settlers knew their purpose in an instant. 
They intended to drag the white men toward the 
bushes where the concealed warriors would seize 
them. Quickly freeing himself, Boone waved his 
hat, and as the nine commissioners sprang from 
their captors, the riflemen in the fort fired down 
upon the treacherous enemies in the hollow. The 
settlers rushed up the hill with all speed, shielding 
themselves from the red men's bullets by trees and 



THE SIEGE OF THE SHAWNEES 179 

stumps. Squire Boone and one other were slightly- 
wounded, but all eventually reached the fort, and 
once again Boone heard with a thankful heart the 
creaking of the lumbering gate as it closed upon his 
foes. 

The pioneers now wondered what would happen 
next. They knew ere long. During the afternoon 
and the next morning, sounds of breaking camp, of 
bugle calls, and of horses splashing in the river, were 
borne up to them; and, as time wore on, these 
sounds grew ever fainter and more distant until 
they ceased. Apparently, the Indians had given 
up the controversy and were going home. It was a 
trick, however, to entice the settlers into the open. 
Somehow they detected it and kept securely within 
their stockade. Instead of marching northward 
toward the Shawnee region, the Indians were 
circling far about Boonesborough to re-cross the 
Kentucky River later, and conceal themselves in a 
different part of the woods, this time near the path 
to the stockade. They accomplished their detour 
quickly, only to find Boonesborough serene and 
quiet and with no one stirring outside its walls. 
Thoroughly indignant that their ruse had failed, 
they swarmed about in the bushes near the fort, 
and from under cover of the trees rained bullets 
thick and fast upon the walls. That night the 



i8o DANIEL BOONE 

settlers could see many camp fires glowing in the 
forest darkness and they realized that at last the 
siege was begun. 

Spurred on by the French-Canadian officers, the 
Indians fought from September 8 to September 17, 
battering at the palisades with a persistence unusual 
to savages. They shot from trees and logs, from 
stumps and hillocks, from under cover of the river 
bank, and from the hills above the fort. Bullets 
poured into the inclosure from all sides and the 
ensuing hubbub was almost maddening. Dogs 
howled; cattle bellowed and plunged in fright; 
girls and sometimes women, overwrought with 
long anxiety and hunger, cried and screamed; 
burning faggots, thrown by the Indians, hissed and 
crackled; the leaders gave orders sharply above 
the din ; Indians yelled and whooped ; and all the 
while muskets rattled and the river gorge echoed 
and reechoed with the firing and clamor. 

The siege was one of the most remarkable ever 
waged by savages, and would have been even more 
unusual if Lieutenant De Quindre had been able 
to force his Indian army to carry out all of his 
plans. If he could have induced them to form and 
make a charge, according to European tactics, the 
little fortress would have fallen almost immediately. 
Failing in this device, the white officer set a detail 



THE SIEGE OF THE SHAWNEES i8i 

of Indians to dig a liiine through which they might 
penetrate to the fort, either for the purpose of 
blowing it up or for capturing it through an under- 
ground passage. The other savages continued 
to fire incessantly in order to conceal the new work. 

Some keen-eyed settler, however, noticed that 
the water of the river appeared muddy, as if earth 
were being thrown into it, and Boone, at once sur- 
mising the cause, ordered some of his men to begin 
a trench which would cut into the enemy's mine. 
He ordered others to build a watch-tower from 
which they might overlook the hostile army's 
proceedings. The tower was erected on the cabin 
which had been Henderson's kitchen, and under- 
neath this house the pioneers began to dig their 
tunnel, about three feet wide and fairly deep; it 
passed beneath various other cabins along the river. 
While men above them watched, the diggers worked 
with might and main in excessive September heat. 
A prolonged rain soon came, to the relief of the 
garrison as well as to those underground. 

On Sunday night, after the settlers had been 
harassed for a week by the besiegers, they suddenly 
discovered that their enemies were throwing lighted 
arrows and flaring torches upon the roofs of their 
cabins in an attempt to fire the stockade. The 
men examined the missiles which failed to burn, and 



i82 DANIEL BOONE 

discovered that they were wound with the oily fiber 
of hickory nuts, and with flax, stolen from some 
cabin. Had it not been for the rain, Boones- 
borough would soon have been a blazing pile, as the 
water within the fort was too low for fire-fighting. 
Happily, the timbers were so wet that the blazing 
brands burned themselves out with little effect. 

Meanwhile, the pioneers continued to dig and the 
Indians continued to dig — and ever nearer one 
another white men and savages made their slow way 
underground. Boone wanted the enemies to know 
that the settlers also were planning a mine, and 
ordered the earth from the tunnel to be thrown over 
the side of the fort in full sight of the army. As the 
unseen savages approached the walls, they and 
the pioneers sometimes ridiculed one another good- 
naturedly. 

Mr. Ranck says that an old hunter would yell 
from the battery in the Shawnee tongue to the 
Indians on the river bank below, ^'What are you 
red rascals doing down there?" 

^'Digging!" would be the answer. *'Blow you 
all to smash soon! What you do?" 

' ' We ? ' ' the settlers would reply. ^ ' We are digging 
to meet you and intend to bury five hundred of 
you." 

So work went on until the 1 5 th of September, when 



THE SIEGE OF THE SHAWNEES 183 

the Indians had come so near the fort that their 
voices and the click of their tools beneath the grass 
could be heard by the settlers. In terror, men 
and women alike awaited the end which seemed at 
hand. They waited, wan with little sleep and 
scanty food, and upon them and their doomed 
cabins a heavy rain fell. The stormy night which 
followed was so dark and windy that they could 
neither see nor hear any movements outside their 
walls. Now and then a flash of lightning startled 
them, but otherwise this tiny band was encom- 
passed with pitchy darkness in the midst of the 
wilderness, beset by savages, and cut off from all 
the world. Yet even on so terrible a night no one 
was willing to surrender. 

Dawn came at last, followed by a clear, blue 
morning, and the road about the little fort lay 
quiet in the sunshine. The settlers bestirred them- 
selves and looked at one another. To their aston- 
ishment they all were alive and well, and their 
cabins were still standing in the stockade. After 
all, nothing had happened during those long and 
awful hours of the previous night, and now no 
sound of the foe came to them from underground. 
In the direction of the trail, they heard the Indians 
and their horses moving about, but even those 
distant noises soon ceased. What did it mean? 



1 84 DANIEL BOONE 

Scouts ventured out, and by noon sped back with 
the news that the savages were in full retreat — 
news which seemed almost too good to be true. 
The rain had proved providential. It had caused 
the red men's tunnel, upon which they had worked 
with constancy uncommon to Indians, to cave in, 
and without doubt the savages had determined 
then and there to go home, rebelling against their 
white leader's orders to begin anew. 

With profound gratitude the pioneers faced life 
once more. The heavy gates swung in upon their 
hinges and stood open. The few remaining cattle 
— nearly all had been slaughtered for food — were 
driven outside the walls to taste green grass again. 
Men and women hurried at once to the spring and, 
standing in the noontide brightness, drank long 
and gratefully. Was anything sweeter or more 
refreshing than a draught of cold water? 

Boone and his men examined the exterior of the 
walls and searched the battlefield about the fort, 
rehearsing the plans and movements of the enemy. 
They found that about one hundred pounds of 
bullets had been fired into the timbers of a single 
blockhouse — how much had been lodged in the 
fortress as a whole could not be judged — and one 
hundred and twenty-five pounds of bullets were 
picked up from the surrounding ground. The 



THE SIEGE OF THE SHAWNEES 185 

pioneers were amazed that they had been able to 
withstand such an onslaught with so little loss. 
Only two of their number had been killed and four 
wounded. The Indian casualties, they reckoned, 
must have reached thirty-seven killed and many 
wounded. 

"A dreadful siege" it had been, as Boone said, 
"which threatened death in every form." Its 
end had come and never again was Boonesborough 
assailed. 

Within a few days eighty men arrived from the 
Holston settlements, and with this reenforcement 
the pioneers bravely sallied forth into the Indians' 
own towns, endeavoring to avenge raids and mur- 
ders which occurred from time to time in the 
county. Boone said in his old age that the Shaw- 
nees had been foolish to show him and his twenty- 
seven salt-makers the way to their country. 

As Boone was recovering from the strain of the 
siege and laying pleasant plans to join his family, 
he suffered a cruel and unnecessary experience. 
During his captivity at Chillicothe, disputes con- 
cerning the leadership of Boonesborough had arisen 
among the ofhcers. Colonel Calloway was the 
highest officer in rank, but Major W. B. Smith 
claimed that he had been appointed commander 
of the fort in Boone^s capacity. Colonel Calloway 



i86 DANIEL BOONE 

resented this and, when Boone had again assumed 
command, was ready to criticise his methods of 
dealing with the Indians. When peace was 
assured, he turned against his former friend and 
charged him with treason. He claimed that Boone 
had favored the British rather than the settlers in 
his actions with the Shawnees and during the siege, 
and in consequence should forfeit his commission 
in the militia of Kentucky County. The simple- 
hearted backwoodsman, who had all but given his 
Ufe for his people, was hurt and bewildered. 

He was summoned before a court-martial at 
Logan's Fort, where the four charges following 
were brought against him by the colonel : 

"i. That Boone had taken out twenty-six men 
(referring only to the twenty-seven captives) to 
make salt at the Blue Licks, and the Indians had 
caught him trapping for beaver ten miles below 
on Licking, and he voluntarily surrendered his 
men at the Licks to the enemy. 

"2. That while a prisoner, he engaged mth Gov- 
ernor Hamilton to surrender the people of Boones- 
borough to be removed to Detroit, and live under 
British protection and jurisdiction. 

''3. That returning from captivity, he encour- 
aged a party of men to accompany him to the Paint 
Lick Town, weakening the garrison at a time when 



THE SIEGE OF THE SHAWNEES 187 

the arrival of an Indian army was daily expected 
to attack the fort. 

^'4. That preceding the attack on Boones- 
borough, he was wilHng to take the officers of the 
fort, on pretense of making peace, to the Indian 
camp, beyond the protection of the guns of the 
garrison." 

In the wilderness in general there was little doubt 
of Boone's unswerving loyalty and devotion to the 
borderers, and innumerable friends at once rallied 
to him to offer encouragement during the stress of 
the trial. Defense in his own behalf and under 
the circumstances must have been difficult for a 
man like Boone, yet he answered each accusation 
at length, proving without the sHghtest doubt that 
he had intended to serve only the interests of his 
country. He said that he had surrendered his 
salt-makers and given promises to the British 
governor in order to save the settlement, and that 
in consequence he himself had been able to warn 
the fort in time. His trip to Paint Lick Town, he 
said, had been for scouting purposes and had 
resulted in no evil ; and as for the powwow, which 
the commissioners had held with Black Fish in the 
hollow, every one must realize that that had been 
pure strategy to gain time. The faith of the com- 
munities in him and his word was proved by his 



1 88 DANIEL BOONE 

complete vindication and by the new honor which 
was at once conferred on him. He was advanced 
to the rank of major, and with the good wishes and 
gratitude of all but a few enemies, he passed from 
the court-martial, more honored and appreciated 
than ever before. 

Soon after, he swung into his saddle and turned 
his horse into the road eastward — his road to the 
Yadkin Valley. 

And behind him nestled Boonesborough in peace, 
its gates ajar. 



CHAPTER XVII 
Public Servant and Indian Fighter 

"I WENT into the settlement," Boone said to 
Filson, ''and nothing worthy of notice passed for 
some time." 

If his biographer recorded the story correctly, 
Boone referred Hghtly to an interesting and im- 
portant period of his life. Perhaps his return to 
the settlements and his reunion with Rebecca and 
the children were such dear memories that he pre- 
ferred to keep silent about them. Until he rode 
into the Yadkin Valley and appeared at father 
Bryan's door, Mrs. Boone supposed him sleep- 
ing in some far, forest grave. No news of him 
had reached her since that cold and fatal January 
when he had encamped at Lower Blue Lick. Al- 
most a year had elapsed — and once again she 
beheld him, like a spirit from another world. 

What he did during the twelvemonth he re- 
mained in the East, we do not know, but without 
doubt he shouldered his gun many times and 
wandered off to hunt in his favorite old Yadkin 

haunts. 

189 



I90 DANIEL BOONE 

Meanwhile, the West, which Boone had helped 
to found, was growing fast, but not without opposi- 
tion from raiding Indian war bands which hovered 
in the outskirts of the forest. The resources be- 
yond the mountains in Kentucky County lured 
many backwoodsmen, who were not serving in the 
Colonial army on the coast, westward, where by 
continual warfare they kept the savages from pene- 
trating to Eastern settlements. Like Boone, they 
played a definite and helpful part in the American 
Revolution. So many traders, hunters, explorers, 
land speculators, and surveyors made their way 
thither that new forts and stations sprang up about 
Boonesborough, and the emigrants began to realize 
that they needed a form of government whereby 
they might make laws and improvements for the 
settlement. 

They petitioned the Assembly of Virginia to 
incorporate the place and give them a ferry across 
the Kentucky River. Fording the stream was 
uncertain and often dangerous. When Boone re- 
turned in October, he brought with him the news 
that the Assembly had passed "An Act for estab- 
lishing the town of Boonesborough in the County 
of Kentucky." Thus Boone's former tiny colony 
in the wilderness became a genuine town, the first 
place in the region to be recognized by law and 



PUBLIC SERVANT AND INDIAN FIGHTER 191 

granted special rights to manage its own affairs. 
The town site was designated and laid out, streets 
with names were suggested, and six hundred and 
forty acres adjoining the town were set off by the 
Virginia Assembly as a common. Daniel Boone 
was appointed a trustee but declined to serve. 

The town's future seemed assured. For a time 
it grew, but some strange trick of circumstances 
prevented it from becoming important, and in time 
it wholly disappeared. To-day there is no vestige 
of its houses or its fort. Time and storms and 
floods have changed the region. The hills and 
hollows have been leveled. Their famous old trees 
have vanished, and only the river remains to say, 
^'Men may come and men may go, but I go on 
forever." 

During the year of 1779, Virginia appropriated 
a small amount of money for the improvement of 
the Wilderness Road. The hardships of the 
journey westward were lessened but little, how- 
ever, and the many families which now emigrated 
by way of Boone's trail suffered privations similar 
to those of the earlier pioneers. They made just 
as picturesque caravans as they wound through 
the woods — pack horses loaded, women riding 
with small children in their laps, babies nestled 
in baskets swung between the head of one horse 



192 DANIEL BOONE 

and the tail of another in the line, children trudging 
beside their fathers who drove the cattle and kept 
their rifles in readiness. And they all ate with the 
same relish the fresh meat of wilderness buffalo 
and roasted corn at the journey's end. 

Daniel Boone and his family went west in 
October and once again passed through Cumber- 
land Gap. He led a large band of Rowan County 
settlers and carried the first artillery sent by Vir- 
ginia to Kentucky — two small cannon. They 
arrived in time for the exceptionally cold winter 
of 1779-80 which seems to have prevailed through- 
out the East also, as the troops in the American 
camp at Morristown suffered as severely as they 
had on the frozen hillsides of Valley Forge in that 
terrible winter of two years before. Boone learned 
that the Indians had destroyed the corn crop in 
Kentucky during the preceding summer, and he 
and Harrod devoted themselves to bringing in 
meat for the new colonists until spring. 

When Transylvania had passed into history and 
the ancient Cherokee hunting-ground had become 
Virginia's most western county, land-titles which 
Henderson had given were void, and claimants 
were obliged to purchase new warrants from Vir- 
ginia. Up to this time neither Boone nor many 
of his friends had registered their claims. So in 




o 



U c 



PUBLIC SERVANT AND INDIAN FIGHTER 193 

the spring it was agreed that Boone should go to 
Richmond and act as agent in the matter for 
Thomas and Nathaniel Hart and a few others, as 
well as for himself. They gave him money for the 
transactions which, added to his own hard-won 
savings, amounted to $20,000 in paper money and 
about $10,000 in silver — a large sum for one man 
to have in his possession in those days. How 
Boone carried his treasure, or whether or not he 
went East alone with it through the forest, we do 
not know. History only says that somehow, 
somewhere, on the way to Richmond, he was 
robbed of all this money. Of course, certain ones 
at once accused him of dishonesty, but his friends, 
the Harts, who had suffered the greatest loss by 
the theft, announced pubHcly that they believed 
him to be above suspicion. Thomas Hart wrote 
to his brother Nathaniel in August, following the 
misfortune, that, while he felt sorry for the poor 
people who might have lost not only their money 
but their rights to their lands by this ill luck, he 
sympathized more with Boone, ''whose character 
suffered in consequence." 

"Much degenerated must the people of this age 
be," Hart wrote, "when amongst them are to be 
found men to censure and blast the reputation of 
a person so just and upright, and in whose heart 



194 DANIEL BOONE 

is a seat of virtue too pure to admit of a thought 
so base and dishonorable." 

The news of Boone's trouble spread, and kind 
messages came to him from many quarters. Late 
in June the Virginia Assembly granted him a 
thousand acres in the present Bourbon County, 
Kentucky, in token of the general sympathy and 
respect. His return to Boonesborough under the 
circumstances must have been a trying experience. 
Little good news he had to carry home with him. 
If, as the story goes, he had really visited the 
British Governor, Hamilton, who was a prisoner 
of war in Virginia at that time, he was at least able 
to tell his fellow-pioneers that that English offi- 
cial was very unhappy in his confinement. Save 
for his leniency to Boone, the acts of that ''hair- 
buying general" had been most cruel, and in the 
eyes of the settlers he surely seemed to deserve 
all his punishments. 

When Boone was again in Boonesborough in 
July, to serve on the jury, he found that, during 
his absence, many families had come over his road 
and by boat-load down the Ohio. Kentucky's 
popularity appeared to continue. Late in the 
year the Virginia legislature divided the region 
into three counties — Jefferson, Lincoln, and Fay- 
ette. The latter included the land between the 



PUBLIC SERVANT AND INDIAN FIGHTER 195 

Kentucky and Ohio rivers, the least populated 
and therefore the wildest district, and toward this 
free land Boone looked with longing eyes. His 
own and the other older settlements were too 
crowded now to please him. After his younger 
brother, Edward, had been shot by Indians, while 
he and Boone were boiling salt at Grassy Lick in 
the present Bourbon County, Boone decided to 
move his family, his pack horses, dogs, and belong- 
ings, to the banks of a small stream now known as 
Boone's Creek, in Fayette County, five miles 
northwest of Boonesborough. In a spot where 
game trails crossed one another, he built a cabin 
and surrounded it with a high fence of pales. Yet 
in this tiny cabin-fort, called Boone's Station, 
in the free and lonely woods, he did not escape 
the duties of public service in a growing region 
beset by Indians. 

Militia service was required in those frontier 
days, and a regiment was raised in each new county. 
John Todd was made colonel of Fayette County, 
with Daniel Boone as lieutenant colonel. The 
three regiments formed a brigade, and George 
Rogers Clark, one of the earliest Kentucky settlers 
and a famous border leader, became brigadier 
general. Surveyors for each county were also 
appointed, for, as land claims increased in number, 



196 DANIEL BOONE 

complications among the settlers increased also. 
Boone served as deputy to Colonel Thomas Mar- 
shall, who was surveyor. 

As representative from Fayette County to the 
Virginia Legislature, whither he was sent in April, 
1 78 1, Boone became entangled in the Revolution. 
At the time, the British general, Cornwallis, was 
pursuing ^' the boy," as he called General Lafayette, 
through Virginia, and when he approached Rich- 
mond, the Frenchman abandoned the defense of 
the city. The Virginia Assembly was obliged to 
adjourn to Charlottesville, where they were soon 
warned that one of Cornwallis's officers. Colonel 
Tarleton, was galloping toward them and would 
capture them if they did not make a hasty 
escape. 

In spite of the notice, Boone and two or three 
other legislators were taken prisoners and sent to 
Cornwallis. They were detained in the British 
camp only a few days, but, although the Assembly 
was continuing its interrupted session at Staunton, 
Boone did not take his seat again until the fall. 
Perhaps he had given his word not to return until 
the next sitting of the legislature, when he had 
been discharged on parole. He probably spent 
the summer in Kentucky and returned to Rich- 
mond in September by the roundabout way of the 



PUBLIC SERVANT AND INDIAN FIGHTER 197 

Ohio River and Pennsylvania, where he visited 
his boyhood home. 

This varied development in the land and life of 
Kentucky dispelled the "good old days" of forest 
freedom and of game in plenty, although to us of 
to-day the region would still have appeared a 
wilderness. To Boone all seemed changed — all 
save the Indians who still murdered and marauded. 
Boone's craft and cunning hand were constantly 
in demand. It is said that once he even shot two 
Indians with a single bullet. He was wandering 
alone through the woods toward Upper Blue Lick, 
when he heard a rifle ball sing through the air near 
his ear and saw it graze the bark of a tree against 
which he had been leaning. He rushed away 
through the undergrowth, waded a near-by creek, 
and hid himself in canebrakes on the other bank. 
As he peered out, he saw two Indians appear on the 
opposite shore. Strangely enough, as he aimed 
at one, the other stepped into the range also. He 
fired; the bullet passed through the head of one, 
who fell dead at once, into the shoulder of the 
second, who fled howling. 

The tragedies caused by savages during 1782 
seem to have been the bloodiest of all the bloody 
experiences of the Kentucky frontier. As usual, 
they were plotted by the British in the Northwest. 



1 98 DANIEL BOONE 

The Red Coats on the seaboard were suffering 
such terrible defeats in *Hhe rebellion" that even 
Cornwallis had been obliged to surrender and had 
marched his troops out of Yorktown to the tune 
of ''The World's Upside Down." This submission 
to fate in the East seemed to stir the British spirit 
of revenge in the West, and in consequence the 
settlers were driven into their forts by the reign of 
terror and torture which swept through the three 
Kentucky counties. Old settlers were robbed of 
their horses and live stock and their cabins fired ; 
and often men were found murdered in the fields 
of corn. New settlers, riding cheerily over the 
Wilderness Road, or sailing down the Ohio on flat 
boats, found themselves suddenly assailed and 
*'no quarter" given, according to British orders to 
the savages. At this time Boone was, as always, 
a tower of strength in Indian warfare and, had his 
advice been followed, Kentucky's misfortunes 
would have been less severe, and he himself might 
have been spared a great sorrow. 

In August, a thousand Indians, mustered under 
two British generals, descended upon Bryan's 
Station, a settlement of forty cabins in Fayette 
County, a fev/ miles north of Boone's own tiny fort. 
Scouts had given warning of the danger to the 
little garrison of fifty riflemen, but what could so 



PUBLIC SERVANT AND INDIAN FIGHTER 199 

small a band do against such odds ! The savages 
hid in the underbrush, and for a time only gun- 
barrels and painted faces proved that Indians 
were about. But soon war whoops and shooting 
began, and the savages, banded under Chief Mo- 
luntha, closed in upon the stockade, brandishing 
flaming torches as well as fire-arrows. The settlers 
fired with such rapidity and precision that the 
Indians soon fell back in amazement, and, when 
the smoke of the battle had floated away, not a 
red man was in sight, save the dead ones lying 
about the fort. For the remainder of the day the 
savages were in hiding, aiming from cover and 
keeping the station in anxiety. By night, how- 
ever, the warfare ceased and the Indians retreated 
toward the Ohio. Savages were indeed strange 
fighters. No settler knew exactly what they would 
do. They were not persistent by nature, and, 
when some reverse occurred, they immediately 
lost interest and abandoned their project. A 
small party of horsemen, who arrived in the after- 
noon to aid the Station, may have made the 
Indians feel that soon all the settlements would 
be armed against them. 

The call for rehef, which messengers bore 
through the counties, met with quick response, 
and three companies went through the forest the 



200 DANIEL BOONE 

next day. Of course, Daniel Boone was among 
them at the head of one division, and with him 
went Israel, his oldest living son, a young man of 
twenty- three. When Boone heard of the danger, 
he hastened to Boonesborough, and, finding the 
women, children, and old men as courageous and 
willing as ever to defend the fort alone, had en- 
listed all the younger men and ridden away with 
them, the last time that he led forth a band of 
fighting men from his own settlement. The three 
companies, numbering about one hundred and 
eighty horsemen, held a council of war at Bryan's 
Station and decided that they would chase the 
retreating Indians. 

The men marched in three divisions, with Daniel 
Boone, Stephen Trigg, and Levi Todd as com- 
manders. Todd, being the senior officer of the 
three, served as commander-in-chief. They fol- 
lowed the trail with all speed and soon came upon 
the Indians' camping-ground of the night before, 
from which the route led toward the Lower Blue 
Lick. On the morning of August 19, they reached 
the Licking River where Boone, who had been 
using his eyes and wits on the way, declared that 
he believed the Indians were luring them on to 
catch them in some trap, and that further pursuit, 
before the expected reenforcements under Colonel 



PUBLIC SERVANT AND INDIAN FIGHTER 201 

Benjamin Logan had come, would be foolhardy. 
The majority of the older- Indian fighters agreed 
with him, although it is reported that 'Xolonel 
Todd was heard to say that Boone was a coward, 
and if they waited till Colonel Logan came up, he 
would gain all the laurels, but if they pressed for- 
ward, they would gain all the glory." 

Fiery Major Hugh McGary at once scorned 
caution. Spurring his horse into the river, he cried, 
*' Delay is dastardly ! Let all who are not cowards 
follow me!" 

The men, seized with sudden excitement, broke 
ranks and raced after him through the stream and 
up the steep bank opposite. The experienced 
officers, like Boone, were obliged to follow. There, 
as Boone had suspected, the Indians lay in ambush. 
About three hundred — the others had already 
escaped — were concealed among the brush and 
trees. 

The Wyandots charged furiously upon the settlers 
with tomahawks, while the Shawnees fired shot 
after shot. For a few minutes the white men 
fought their foes gallantly face to face, but they 
soon realized that victory for them would be 
impossible. They turned and fled precipitately 
down the bank and swam out into the stream, 
leaving behind them seventy dead comrades whose 



202 DANIEL BOONE 

scalps were later borne away triumphantly by 
the savages. Before Boone and his son had 
thought of flight for themselves, Israel fell at his 
father's feet, mortally wounded. Boone quickly 
lifted his boy from the ground and, holding him 
fast, leaped down the shore into the water. By the 
time he had reached the other side, Israel was 
dead, and Boone, in order to save himself, was 
forced in his despair to leave the body in the forest. 
Boone never fully recovered from the shock and 
suffering of this sorrow. Tears always filled his 
eyes in later years when he told the story of this 
terrible and unnecessary disaster. 

As the settlers made their confused escape, they 
met Colonel Logan coming to overtake them, with 
five hundred men, who, added to their ovm former 
force, would have been more than a match for the 
Indians. With what regret and bitterness they 
viewed the folly of their actions, as they went home 
defeated ! 

Kentucky was now fully alarmed. The red 
men had returned to their own country, exulting 
in spoils and scalps. Who could tell what they 
would not do next? The spirit of fear spread so 
rapidly that Boone felt that help from the East 
was needed immediately. Accordingly he sat 
down in his little cabin-fort in Fayette County and 



PUBLIC SERVANT AND INDIAN FIGHTER 203 

wrote the governor of Virginia one of his spirited 
but badly- spelled letters/ begging for aid. 

^'Present circumstances of affairs," he said, 
"cause me to write to your Excellency." The 
details of the fatal conflict at Licking River fol- 
lowed. "I know that your circumstances are 
critical," he continued ; "but are we to be wholly 
forgotten? I hope not. I trust about five hun- 
dred men may be sent to our assistance, im- 
mediately. If these shall be stationed as our 
county lieutenants shall deem necessary, it may 
be the means of saving our part of the country. 
, . . I have encouraged the people in this country 
all that I could ; but I can no longer justify them 
or myself to risk our lives here under extraordinary 
hazard. The inhabitants of this country are very 
much alarmed at the thought of the Indians bring- 
ing another campaign into our country this fall. 
If this should be the case, it will break up these 
settlements. I hope, therefore, your Excellency 
will take the matter into your consideration, and 
send us some relief as quickly as possible." 

Times must have been indeed serious when the 
invincible Boone was forced to admit that another 
Indian campaign "would break up the settlements." 

The report of this appealing letter, and of pro- 
1 The original, unedited letter appears to have been lost. 



204 DANIEL BOONE 

tests from other Kentucky settlers, aroused 
General George Rogers Clark, and he assembled 
one thousand mounted riflemen at the mouth of 
the Licking River where Cincinnati stands to-day. 
Among them was Daniel Boone, ready to set 
out in the last expedition in which he fought for 
the defense of the settlements. They proceeded 
through the forests of Ohio to the region of the 
Little Miami, where they burned Indian villages 
and laid waste Indian plantations, destroyed stores 
of corn, grain, and dried meat, and caused great 
suffering among the Shawnees. The savages were 
so awed and terrified that they fled without a fight, 
and, as the British ceased to support them at the 
end of the Revolution, they were too greatly weak- 
ened to regain their usual strength and to besiege 
the Kentucky settlements with their old-time 
power. They only harassed now and then and 
committed small outrages during the next ten years, 
once even attempting to capture their former 
** brother." The spirit of revenge was strong in 
the savage nature, and Boone's many successes 
could not be forgiven. 

Boone, it appears, was working in his log tobacco 
barn when the Indians caught him unawares. He 
himself never used tobacco, but he had planted a 
small patch of the plant to sell to his neighbors, 



PUBLIC SERVANT AND INDIAN FIGHTER 205 

perhaps one hundred and fifty hills. When he was 
ready to cure this, he cut it and laid it in three tiers 
on poles in a little temporary shelter covered over 
with grass and cane. At the time of the Indian 
visit, the lower tier of tobacco had become dry, 
and Boone was transferring it to the second tier, so 
that he might gather and store a fresh crop in the 
lower tier. While he was thus busy, and standing 
on poles that supported the upper tiers, four red 
men appeared in the doorway. 

^'Now, Boone," they said, looking up at him, 
"we got you. You no get away more. We carry 
you off to Chillicothe this time. You no cheat us 
again." 

Boone recognized these Shawnees as four of the 
Indians who had captured him at the Blue Licks 
boiling camp. 

"Ha! old friends!" he answered. "Glad to see 
you!" 

They begged him to be off at once with them, 
but he said that, just as soon as he had stacked his 
tobacco, he would gladly go. He told them to 
watch him closely, working and chatting the while 
with composure, crafty backwoodsman that he 
was! 

Suddenly he dropped an armful of the dry and 
dusty sticks upon the upturned faces of the savages, 



2o6 DANIEL BOONE 

blinding and smothering them, and at the same 
moment he jumped from his high place and rushed 
toward his cabin. There he made himself safe ,. 
behind the pales. Boone is said to have told this 
incident with great glee, at the wedding of a grand- 
daughter, shortly before his death. It took more 
than a wily Indian to outwit Daniel Boone. 

While Boone and the Kentucky settlers had been 
struggling to hold the West and free it from In- 
dians and their British masters, the colonists on 
the coast had been fighting to free the lands from 
British control and had won independence for 
themselves and for their Western countrymen. 
Already King George had announced his failure 
to Parliament, "in a voice choked with emotion," 
and the preliminary articles of peace had been 
signed, declaring that the United States was an 
independent nation, extending from the Atlantic 
Ocean to the Mississippi River and from the Great 
Lakes to Florida. The news of the treaty was 
coming slowly over the sea, and meanwhile the 
pioneers in Kentucky, unconscious of the momen- 
tous tidings lying in a sealed packet in some ship's 
hold, were hunting, farming, and staking claims 
in comparative quiet. 

In the spring of 1783, an Eastern messenger 
rode into Boonesborough, and the eager settlers, 



PUBLIC SERVANT AND INDIAN FIGHTER 207 

flocking to him, read the welcome word Peace dis- 
played on his cap of coonskin. Shouts and hurrahs 
echoed and reechoed in the forest ; rifles and pistols, 
aimed at the blue sky, sent loud reports cracking 
through the distance; and, when night came, a 
huge bonfire was lighted and roared triumphantly. 
The celebration was long and enthusiastic, and 
not until late that spring night did Boonesborough 
fall asleep after its prayers of gratitude had been 
said. A fresh era seemed to have dawned for the 
new nation and the new West, and never again 
were Boonesborough's great gates closed. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

The Flight from Civilization 

Daniel Boone was middle-aged when the mem- 
bers of the Continental Congress marched to church 
in a body and gave thanks to God for the success 
of the patriot cause. He was hale and hearty, as 
a man in the prime of life should be, when he re- 
turned from his last expedition against the Indians, 
the excursion under Clark which brought an end 
to general Indian outrages. Now that he had 
built the Wilderness Road, opened the West, and 
helped to make Kentucky's welfare more or less 
secure, we might expect that the remainder of his 
days passed in happiness and comfort and further 
achievement. But, although Boone's public serv- 
ice continued almost to the end of his life, his 
greatest work was done. 

As a pioneer and Indian fighter he had been Ken- 
tucky's leader, sharing renown as a soldier of the 
West only with George Rogers Clark. In the days 
of the early settlements and of the Indian conflicts 
he had won for himself a fadeless memory; his 
courage, understanding, forethought, and unselfish- 

208 



THE FLIGHT FROM CIVILIZATION 209 

ness had established him for all time in the hearts 
of his countrymen. Yet when Kentucky's stock- 
ade gates were opened, and its days of war became 
less and less frequent, his leadership waned and 
he was forced to step aside for men better adapted 
to the ofhces of government. He was neither a 
statesman nor a business man, but a quiet, un- 
sophisticated backwoodsman, with a keen dislike 
for all the problems of society. As Kentucky's 
settlements grew into towns, he found himself 
little fitted for the complex life of their civiliza- 
tion for which he himself had blazed the way. 
How strange it was that the very development and 
prosperity in the West which he had made possible 
should have caused him great unhappiness ! 

His shortcomings, however, did not detract from 
his achievements nor from his fame. Stories of 
his exploits as hunter and explorer were told and 
retold throughout the country and traveled even 
to Europe where they were repeated in England 
and on the Continent with wonder and delight. 
The life of the picturesque pioneer dressed in skins, 
living in a log cabin, fighting Indians and wild 
beasts, and spending as much time as possible in 
solitude, became familiar to busy and prosperous 
men and women in distant cities in which Boone 
himself would have felt ill at ease indeed. They 



2IO DANIEL BOONE 

admired his heroism and were fascinated by his ad- 
venturous career. 

In 1784, John Filson's record of Boone's Hfe was 
published, and, in spite of its stilted and formal 
style, it was widely circulated. Men at home and 
abroad discussed its thrilling story, and in conse- 
quence Boone's reputation was increased. He 
became a famous man. To foreigners he typified 
the true American pioneer in all his hardihood, 
simplicity, and dauntless spirit. Public journals 
contained accounts of his exploits ; travelers to the 
West begged interviews with him; books of the 
time contained references to him and his prowess, 
and even Lord Byron's muse was moved by tales 
of the backwoodsman and the poem to " General 
Boone of Kentucky" followed. To-day, in the 
Congressional Library at Washington, there are 
deposited various biographies of Daniel Boone 
written in foreign languages and published in foreign 
countries — Norway, Sweden, Germany, France, 
and the United Kingdom. 

After the Revolution, Boone busied himself with 
his favorite occupations. With the receipts from 
military services, and by constant thrift and in- 
dustry, he was able to pay for various sites and 
purchase some comforts to relieve the rough living 
of frontier life. But he was constantly interrupted 



THE FLIGHT FROM CIVILIZATION 211 

in his hunting and farming by the many conflicts in 
land claims which arose in consequence of the loose 
surveying methods. He was not only deputy 
surveyor but both sheriff and county lieutenant 
for Fayette, and, as these three officials, he was 
obliged to respond to many demands. The follow- 
ing is one of his official military orders for a body- 
guard to escort the chief surveyor, Colonel Marshall, 
to Kentucky's land office, situated at the Falls of 
the Ohio. This order proves that Boone's reputa- 
tion did not depend upon his abiHty to spell. 

"Orders to Capt. Hazelrigg — your are amedetly 
to order on Duty 3 of your Company as goude 
[guard] to scorte Col Marshall to the falls of ohigho 
you will call on those who was Exicused from the 
Shone [Shawnee] Expedistion and those who Come 
into the Country after the army Marched they are 
to meet at Lexinton on Sunday next with out fale 
given under my hand this 6 Day of Janury 1783. 

"Dnl Boone." 

Boone's Kentucky was changing rapidly. Several 
thousand newcomers — land speculators, mer- 
chants, lawyers, other professional men, and 
genuine settlers who wanted to found homes — 
made their way thither following the Revolution. 
Germans, Scotch, Irish, as well as Americans, were 
among the throng. Real estate companies, formed 



212 DANIEL BOONE 

in Eastern cities, told the people in glowing colors of 
Western life and hired agents to procure sites for 
their customers. The wilderness became a busy 
region, the Louisville settlement alone growing 
to have three hundred inhabitants. Within two 
years after the Wyandots and Shawnees had so 
cleverly lured the settlers to death at the Blue 
Licks, a "dry-goods store" was opened in Lexing- 
ton. Within another year an inn appeared there, 
and twelve months later Kentucky's first news- 
paper, the Kentucky Gazette, was founded, and 
issued its first sheet printed on a press which had 
been hauled by pack horses over the mountains. 
The settlers began to plan for their children's 
education — the first school in Kentucky had been 
opened in 1779 in Boonesborough — and to make 
sacrifices to meet the expense. 

Crops — Indian corn, grain, pumpkins, melons, 
fruits, and tobacco — yielded more than the 
Kentucky colonists could use for themselves. The 
wide ranges were dotted with great droves of cattle 
and with horses, hogs, and sheep ; and, at a distance, 
deer, bears, and buff aloes were still hunted, and the 
yield of venison, bacon, and beef gave the settlers 
ample wild meat. Furs and bittersweet roots of 
ginseng were shipped eastward, either by way 
of the Wilderness Road or the Ohio, and beef, 



THE FLIGHT FROM CIVILIZATION 213 

bacon, tobacco, and salt from the salt springs at 
the licks were loaded on flatboats and borne 
down the Ohio and Mississippi. Merchandise, 
such as the early settlers had never dreamed of 
possessing, was brought back to change the primi- 
tive mode of living in the wilderness. Because 
money was more abundant and trade brisk, com- 
forts and even extravagance began to appear. 

The three counties into which the wilderness had 
been divided were united into one district in 1783, 
and the region once more called by its Indian name, 
Kentucky. A court was estabhshed for certain 
criminal and land cases. At first Harrodsburg 
was the seat of justice, but, for want of accommoda- 
tions, the court sat in a meetinghouse six miles 
distant. Before long, a log courthouse was built 
near the church. This tiny settlement was soon 
known as Danville and became the capital of 
the county. There, in 1784, representatives of 
the various militia companies assembled to con- 
sider the desirability of the separation of Kentucky 
from Virginia and the formation of an independent 
state. Later, a formal convention was held and 
resolutions were adopted and sent to the Virginia 
legislature, begging that the county be allowed to 
separate and, with the sanction of Congress, to be- 
come a state in the Union. The petition was not 



214 DANIEL BOONE 

granted until 1792, and in consequence the inter- 
vening years brought much pohtical discontent to 
the thirty thousand settlers of the county, in spite 
of their general prosperity and newly-won ease. 
Some even wanted to set up an independent 
government in Kentucky, amd all desired to 
have some official arrangements made whereby 
certain dehnite and immediate steps might be 
taken for the wehare of the West which neither 
Virginia nor the eastern members of Congress 
considered necessan,*. It was e\'ident that Boone's 
Kentucky was no longer a mere cabin settlement ; 
it had become a commonwealth, at least in spirit. 

Two old enemies and a new one disturbed the 
peace and made action seem necessary.*. Although 
the Revolution was passed, the British posts lo- 
cated in the great Northwest refused to surrender 
and continued to incite the savage aUies of the 
Crown. Indian depredations went on. Houses 
and stores of pro\"isions were burned, men and 
women murdered, and scalps stretched upon hoops 
for dr\ing by the savages, with their customary 
coolness and delight. The Kentuckians felt that 
Virginia, despite any complications at home, should 
send the aid for which they had long pleaded, in 
order to terminate, once and for all, this loss and 
bloodshed. 



THE FUGHT FROM CRILIZATION 215 

The third disturbing element was Spain, whose 
territor>', called Louisiana, lay beyond Kentucky 
to the west. When the settlers had acquired the 
region which once had been the West to them, they 
longed for the land yet farther on. and for a free 
outlet to the sea down the Mississippi River in 
particular . Louisiani 1^ 1 : ttz. discovered, settled, 
and held, by the Pre-:.! -1:1:- i;::. "^"-t-. by a 
secret trear\-. it had been ceded to the Spanish 
Crown. In consequence. Spain owned Xew Or- 
leans and all the land ab^;■-:: :hr n: -:h :: i^e Mis- 
sissippi. As long as the Kt'.-ii^-rs — rr.rz to 
ship only furs to the Atlantic : ; :.5:. is.ty l^:;^^l i^:^i 
the long journey over the m : -r.: i— s by pack hoises 
answered their purpose "^ell ezi-izji. When they 
came to have bulky produce i^zlch. they wished to 
sell, such as com mecl. =-:ur, pork and l-inber, 
they were obliged to transport it on flatboats or 
rafts down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to Xew 
Orleans. There the cargo and boat were sold, or 
the cargo sold and transferred to ocean vessels. 
Thus the -'Father of Waters," as the Indian name 
'' Mississippi* may be translated, bdng the only 
outlet for this hea\y produce, was ver\- necessar}- 
to the prosperity- of the West. Spanish o5.cers 
at Xew Orleans made more or less trouble for the 
merchants and threatened to prevent them from 



2i6 DANIEL BOONE 

sending their produce to the port. The Eastern 
men in Congress failed to realize the importance of 
free navigation on the Mississippi, and the Ken- 
tuckians, being unable either to form a state or to 
become independent of Virginia, were greatly 
handicapped and exasperated. 

While these changes were coming to pass in his 
former wilderness, Daniel Boone was growing more 
and more restless and unhappy. Probably in the 
spring of 1786, he abandoned his cabin-fort at 
Boone's Station and moved north to Maysville, 
on the south bank of the Ohio, where he con- 
ducted a small tavern and store. Mrs. Boone, 
doubtless, served as hostess, as Boone himself was 
surely too much occupied away from the inn to 
attend to the travelers who came by water to 
Kentucky. He hunted, trapped, surveyed, piloted 
immigrant parties, and served as merchant and 
trader. The goods, which he sold in his small store, 
he and his sons bought in Maryland in exchange 
for furs, skins, and ginseng which they carried 
thither over old roads or new paths on their pack 
horses. He frequently ran the gauntlet on the 
Ohio between Maysville and Point Pleasant, 
which lay up the river at the mouth of the Ka- 
nawha, alternately trading at the hamlets and 
fighting the Indians who hid along the banks. 
Such experiences were the spice of life to Boone. 



THE FLIGHT FROM CIVILIZATION 217 

But worries and troubles lay heavily on his heart. 
As more and more land claims were registered by the 
newcomers, the old settlers, like Boone, who had 
paid little heed to legal requirements, found their 
lands entered in the land office in strange names. 
Boone, who had given his life for Kentucky, and 
to whom its hills, streams, and valleys were most 
dear, never dreamed that any one could or would 
wish to, rob him of his just rights to the wilderness. 
He considered that any entry, recording his claim, 
even one so vague as the following, proved without 
a doubt his right to the property. 

^'Aperel the 22 1785" is the date of a claim "on 
the Bank of Cantuckey." *' Survayd for Dal Boone 
5000 acres begin at Robert Camels N E Corner at 
at 2 White ashes and Buckeyes S 1200 p[oles] to 
3 Shuger trees Ealm and walnut E 666 yr to 6 
Shuger trees and ash N 1200 yr to a poplar and 
beech W 666 yr to the begining." 

With his unbusinesslike viewpoint, he could not 
realize that a regular registration of land claims 
according to legal form was absolutely necessary. 
He himself was scrupulously honest; he expected 
individuals and the state to be equally just to him. 
Yet ere long, because of his impractical ways and 
his antipathy to technical forms of law, he found 
himself absolutely landless. The many acres which 



2i8 DANIEL BOONE 

he had been granted, or had preempted, during 
the twenty years since he blazed the Wilderness 
Road, were shorn from him. The two thousand 
acres, given him by the Transylvania Company, 
had lapsed, of course, but Virginia had substi- 
tuted a thousand acres in the present Bourbon 
County, and Boone himself had chosen many choice 
sites during his constant wandering. He employed 
counsel and attended the courts, but without avail. 
His claims were imperfectly entered and he was 
ejected from the land which he had explored and 
valiantly defended. Even his beautiful farm near 
Boonesborough passed into other hands. However 
much the courts may have sympathized with the 
hero of Kentucky, they were forced to abide by 
the letter rather than by the spirit of the law. 

Accordingly, in 1788, Boone packed up his goods 
and, turning his back upon the Kentucky which he 
had helped to found and had loved so long, he 
sought a new home in the wilderness of the Ka- 
nawha Valley, then in Virginia. 

In a memorial to the legislature of Kentucky in 
181 2, he wrote briefly and with natural simplicity 
(some kindly hand corrected his crude spelling) 
of this sad time in his life : ** Unacquainted with the 
niceties of the law, the few lands I was enabled to 
locate were, through my ignorance, generally 
swallowed up by better claims." 



THE FLIGHT FROM CIVILIZATION 219 

Boone at first settled on the river not far from 
Point Pleasant. Later he moved to the site of 
Charleston. Many of the valley people knew him 
personally; others by reputation only; and all 
welcomed him with such warmth that he must 
have been heartened and have found the new life 
offering unexpected interest. He cultivated his 
farm, raised stock, hunted in the proper seasons, 
although the region was not as rich in game as he 
had hoped, and kept a small store in Point Pleasant. 
He was then as always a picturesque and compelling 
figure. One who knew him in those days de- 
scribed him as follows:^ ''His large head, full 
chest, square shoulders, and stout form are still 
impressed upon my mind. He was (I think) 
about five feet ten inches in height, and his weight 
say one hundred and seventy-five pounds. He was 
solid in mind as well as in body, never frivolous, 
thoughtless, or agitated ; but was always quiet, 
meditative, and impressive, unpretentious, kind, 
and friendly in his manner. He came very much 
up to the idea we have of the old Grecian philos- 
ophers — particularly Diogenes." 

During his residence at Maysville, Boone served 
as town trustee and as representative in the Vir- 
ginia legislature, where he revived the sore question 

* Quoted from " Daniel Boone " by Reuben Gold Thwaites. 



220 DANIEL BOONE 

of military aid for the Kentuckians. He com- 
plained that the arms sent west by the state were 
of little use, that the rifles came without flints or 
cartridge-boxes, and that the swords had no scab- 
bards. 

The men of Kanawha Valley treated him with 
equal distinction. They petitioned for his ap- 
pointment as heutenant colonel of their county, 
which ofhce he received, and later they elected 
him to represent them at Richmond. As during 
his terms of service from Boonesborough and 
Maysville, he indulged in little oratory in the as- 
sembly, but lent himself with quiet dignity and 
sympathy to the many interests before the body. 
He was a member of two committees which in 
those days were important — the committee on 
religion, and the committee on propositions and 
licenses. 

By the summer of 1790, the Indians had become 
so incensed by the crowds of settlers coming to the 
West that they were making life almost unbearable. 
The Government was at last forced to take the field 
against them, after seven years of fruitless parleying 
and treaties. The Federal forces quelled various 
uprisings during the following twelve months. 
Boone and his militia, however, do not appear to 
have figured in any of the encounters ; probably 



THE FLIGHT FROM CIVILIZATION 221 

they were needed for defense on the frontier at 
home. In October, 1791, while Boone was in the 
legislature, Governor Arthur St. Clair, of the 
Northwest Territory, suffered overwhelming defeat 
in an expedition against the Indian towns on the 
Miami River. 

When word of St. Clair's disaster reached the 
Virginia assembly, the members immediately voted 
to send a large quantity of ammunition to the 
militia on the Monongahela and Kanawha rivers, 
which was soon to be called out, following the 
Federal reverses. Boone applied to the governor 
for the contract to transport these supplies. 

''Sir," wrote Boone, ''as sum person Must Carry 
out the Armantstion [ammunition] to Red Stone if 
your Excelency should have thought me a proper 
person I would undertake it on conditions I have 
the apintment to vitel the company at Kanhowway 
so that I Could take Down the flower as I paste 
that place I am your Excelencey's most obedient 
omble servant Dal Boone." 

This original document met with favor. Five 
days later, December 18, 1791, Boone received 
the commission and set out with the supplies for 
Red Stone, now known as Brownsville, Pennsyl- 
vania. Some misunderstanding seems to have 
arisen, for, although Boone delivered certain 



222 DANIEL BOONE 

orders, others failed to reach their destination, 
and complaints were forwarded to the governor. 
Very Hkely Boone's unbusinesslike methods in- 
volved him once more in complications. No official 
inquiry into the affair seems to have been made. 
There evidently was no question of Boone's honor- 
able intentions. 

The frontiers were alarmed by the defeat of St. 
Clair, and indignation spread throughout the 
country. General Wayne — ' ' Mad Anthony " they 
called him, on account of his bravery and dash, 
though he was an experienced and skillful soldier — 
was appointed St. Clair's successor and expected 
to reduce the savages to abject submission. He 
marched west in the autumn of 1793, and in August, 
1794, with cavalry and infantry charges, defeated 
the enemy at Fallen Timbers, not far from the 
present Maumee City, Ohio. The following sum- 
mer eleven hundred sachems and warriors, repre- 
senting twelve cantons, met the United States 
Commissioners at Grenville, north of Cincinnati, 
and made another treaty of peace — a peace which 
the Indians this time observed for fifteen years. 
1 Joy flashed along the frontiers, and men and 
women breathed easily, for now it seemed that, 
after twenty years of almost constant dread of 
Indians, they were free to go and come in peace, 



THE FLIGHT FROM CIVILIZATION 223 

to open up the forests, to hunt wherever wild beasts 
led them, to cultivate their farms, to develop their 
own lives and their own communities as pleased 
them best. Naturally, Boone also rejoiced in this 
great change, grateful for the new freedom for 
himself and for the hundreds of strangers settled 
in the region over which he felt an ownership 
almost paternal. Three years before the assurance 
of peace, the county had been made a state, and the 
year following the treaty of Grenville the Kentucky 
legislature had appropriated money for the im- 
provement of the Wilderness Road. For the first 
time, it was made fit for wagon travel. Up to that 
time all settlers had come over its difficult and un- 
even way on foot or on horseback, and pack horses 
had carried all belongings. It was estimated that 
at least seventy-five thousand persons had gone 
to the West over Daniel Boone's road in the years 
between 1775 and 1796, before it was opened to 
wagons. Surely Kentucky had developed. 

When news of the Legislature's vote regarding 
the Wilderness Road reached Boone, he made one 
more pathetic appeal to bring himself again into 
his old life. 

"Sir,'' he wrote to Governor Shelby of Ken- 
tucky, "after my best Respts to your Ex- 
celancy and famyly I wish to inform you that I 



2 24 DANIEL BOONE 

have sum intention of undertaking this New Rode 
that is to be cut through the Wilderness and I 
think my Self intitled to the ofer of the Bisness as 
I first Marked out that Rode in March 1775 and 
Never rec'd anything for my trubel and Sepose I 
am no Statesman I am a Woodsman and think 
My Self as Capable of Marking and Cutting that 
Rode, as any other man Sir if you think with Me I 
would thank you to wright me a Line by the post 
the first oportuneaty and he Will Lodge it at Mr. 
John Milers on hinkston fork as I wish to know 
Where and when it is to be Laat [let] So that I 
may attend at the time I am Deer Sir your very 
omble sarvent Daniel Boone." 

But alas ! Boone was no longer a leader, and the 
contract, which should have in all fairness been 
awarded him, was given some one else — some one 
else to whom the state owed little, while to Boone 
it owed much. 

Boone was far from happy. Memories flooded 
his thoughts. He longed for the old Kentucky, 
for the old trails and licks, for the old friends with 
whom he had lived and fought side by side. He 
longed, too, for the unbroken forest and the old- 
time wilderness undisturbed by settlers. The 
hunting did not satisfy him as formerly, although 
he had unusual success in beaver-trapping and 



THE FLIGHT FROM CIVILIZATION 225 

managed to bring home much meat to share with 
his neighbors, and many skins and furs to send to 
Eastern markets. As he trudged the valley of the 
Gauley River, flowing along not far from Charles- 
ton, his favorite haunt for beavers, his mind 
reverted sadly to days that were gone. How hope- 
fully and heartily he had worked in the past and 
how bitterly life had served him ! 

To complete his unhappiness, in 1798 came the 
news that the few claims in Kentucky which he 
had still possessed when he departed for the 
Kanawha Valley, had been sold at auction by the 
sheriff for the taxes which he was unable to pay. 
His last piece of land in Kentucky was gone ! The 
wilderness, to which he had blazed the way, now 
held only memories for him. 

And so once again Boone set his face toward the 
West. For the fourth time he decided to flee 
from civilization. As a youth he had guided his 
father's family from the growing settlements of 
Oley Township to the beautiful and untrammeled 
Yadkin Valley. As a man of forty, he had led his 
wife and children over the mountains and through 
Cumberland Gap to that alluring Indian hunting- 
ground which he "esteemed a second paradise." 
Baffled and worsted by the strange customs of 
society, which had followed in his footsteps over the 

Q 



226 DANIEL BOONE 

wilderness trail and by way of the Ohio, he had 
wrenched himself from dear associations about 
Boonesborough, and, as a man of fifty-four, he had 
resolutely set off for the banks of the Kanawha 
where he hoped to find a life more like the old life 
of the frontier. There the crowds — or what 
seemed like crowds to him — overtook him and 
further disappointments came to increase his dis- 
like for civilization. Again, at sixty-five, he felt 
that he must seek the wilderness. 

Plains and forests lay in Spain's great territory 
beyond the Mississippi River, which bounded the 
United States on the west. Buffaloes, grizzly 
bears, deer, and beavers were plentiful, and the 
people there, Boone heard, were open-hearted 
Frenchmen for the most part, living simple, un- 
ambitious lives as small farmers and hunters. 
Spain held them by few laws and ruled them lightly. 
Moreover, the Spanish Crown was offering generous 
grants to American pioneers who would settle 
in Louisiana. Canada's power was feared, and 
the strength of colonists from the East would help 
to forestall any attack which the northern country 
might be planning upon the fertile Mississippi 
Valley. Daniel Morgan Boone, Daniel Boone's 
oldest living son, had already settled in the present 
St. Charles County of Missouri, near the junction 



THE FLIGHT FROM CIVILIZATION 227 

of the Missouri River and the ^'Father of Waters." 
Boone followed him in 1799. 

The story goes that the people of the Kanawha 
Valley came from far and near, on foot, on horse- 
back, and by boat, to say good-by to the great 
backwoodsman. For them it was a sad occasion. 

"They bade him a farewell as solemnly affec- 
tionate," says Dr. Thwaites, "as though he were 
departing for another world." Indeed, he was 
bound for a region strange to them, belonging to 
a foreign country and ruled by a king, an ofhcial 
for whom Americans had little use in general. 

Flatboats were made ready, and the Boones, 
together with such chattels as could be transported 
easily and with some cattle, embarked on the 
Kanawha and sailed down the Ohio. The journey 
was taken leisurely. They stopped at' various 
towns along the banks to visit friends and to buy 
provisions. Everywhere Boone's arrival was an- 
nounced, as he was well known by reputation, and 
men flocked to him to ask questions and advice. 

It is said that at Cincinnati some one asked him 
why, at sixty-five, he was leaving a good home and 
friends for the uncertain life of a frontier. 

"Too crowded here!" he answered with charac- 
teristic briefness. "I want more elbow-room!" 

So Daniel Boone crossed the current of the broad 



228 DANIEL BOONE 

Mississippi to the Louisiana shore and settled in 
the Middle West, where to-day Missouri lies. 

Courageously, and hoping for peace and content- 
ment, he made his way westward — for the last 
time. 



CHAPTER XIX 

Traveling toward the Sunset 

It was indeed a feather in Louisiana's cap to win 
so renowned an American as Daniel Boone. The 
inhabitants soon came to reaHze the kind of man 
who had come to live among them. They might 
have said of him, as did Thomas Hart, who knew 
Boone ''when poverty and distress held him fast 
by the hand," that they "ever found him a noble 
and generous soul, despising everything mean." 

The Spanish authorities, according to their 
''assurance that ample portions of land should be 
given to him and his family," granted him, free of 
charge, ten thousand choice Spanish arpents, which 
amounted to about eight hundred and fifty English 
acres, bordering upon his son's estate on Femme 
Osage Creek, north of the Missouri River and about 
forty-five miles west of St. Louis. There Boone 
built a log cabin, and he and his wife settled them- 
selves to enjoy life among the picturesque little 
villages which the French had strung along the 
river and creek banks. 

The leisurely and care-free existence of his new 

229 



230 DANIEL BOONE 

neighbors proved a great relief to Boone after the 
zealous, bustling, warring ways of his own young 
and growing country just across the river. A 
kindly spirit seems to have prevailed. The French 
were on friendly terms with the Indians, with whom 
they bartered, and, it is said, theft and dishonesty 
being rare, only two locks were necessary in St. 
Louis, the capital of Upper Louisiana — one on 
the prison, the other on the Government House. 
Boone's fame had traveled before him and his 
welcome was exceedingly hearty. The reception, 
which ofi&cials as well as genial individuals gave 
him, together with free and easy customs, made 
Boone feel at home and happy. Indeed, he often 
said that, except his first long hunt in Kentucky, 
this was the pleasantest time of his life. 

The year following, Boone was appointed syndic, 
or magistrate, of Femme Osage District. The 
honor came to him because he was able and worthy, 
and because he could read and write! Most of 
the French inhabitants were illiterate, and the little 
education which Boone had acquired was appre- 
ciated by the authorities. Quarrels between neigh- 
bors and disputes of many kinds were referred to 
him, as the chief official of the district, and naturally 
he settled them in a manner entirely informal and 
original. He knew little, if any, law and despised 



TRAVELING TOWARD THE SUNSET 231 

those who did, beheving to the end of his Hfe that he 
had been tricked out of his Kentucky lands through 
the chicanery of lawyers. 

Boone heard all cases unassisted, himself acting 
as counsel, judge, and jury. He cared nothing for 
evidence, or the facts of a case from which he 
might have reasoned the truth, because he ex- 
pected the parties to a suit and their witnesses to 
tell him only that which was true. Upon their 
testimony his decision was based. He imposed 
whatever penalties he considered reasonable — 
sometimes many lashes on the bare flesh, ''well laid 
on." With a fine sense of justice and a large fund 
of common sense, Boone was well fitted for his 
oflS-cial task, in spite of his ignorance of legal pro- 
cedure. The inhabitants accepted his judgments 
as fair and final, and as syndic he was altogether 
respected. In reporting upon him later, the lieu- 
tenant governor of Louisiana wrote: 

''Mr. Boone, a respectable old man, just and 
impartial ; he has already, since I appointed him, 
offered his resignation owing to his infirmities; 
believing I know his probity, I have induced him 
to remain, in view of my confidence in him, for 
the public good," 

The Emperor Napoleon, then the most powerful 
monarch across the sea, was planning to reconstruct 



232 DANIEL BOONE 

Europe according to his own ideas. He promised 
the Duke of Parma that he should be king of 
Tuscany, and the duke's sister, who was queen of 
Spain and the power behind the Spanish throne, 
induced her husband to cede Louisiana back 
to France as a token of gratitude to Napoleon. 
This transfer in 1800 would have ended Spain's 
authority throughout Louisiana, if France at the 
moment had been ready to take possession. Before 
the exchange was formally completed. Napoleon 
was on the verge of war with Great Britain, and 
feared that England would send over a fleet to 
America and rob him of Louisiana. 

The people of the United States were greatly 
disturbed by the news of the session. They were 
suspicious of the daring and restless spirits in con- 
trol of affairs in France. President Jefferson said, 
"This little event of France's possessing herself 
of Louisiana is the embryo of a tornado." 

So the young republic decided to buy Louisiana 
and thus obtain the Mississippi Valley and the 
West beyond, as far as the Rocky Mountains; 
and Napoleon determined to sell it, in order to rid 
himself of a problem and procure funds for his war 
with England. In 1803, he sold the rich land for 
two cents an acre, and the United States acquired 
a territory which more than doubled its area. 



TRAVELING TOWARD THE SUNSET 233 

The step was a momentous one for the American 
people, but to Daniel Boone it meant further 
disaster. 

The Stars and Stripes were raised at St. Louis 
in March, 1804, and Boone's authority as syndic 
then ceased, for the ''Yankees," and not Spain, 
were in power. He, as well as his French neighbors, 
lamented the new regime because it would mean an 
influx of noisy settlers, greedy of land and game, 
and an end to Louisiana's peaceful life. 

Unfortunately, Boone learned no lesson by his 
sad experiences in Kentucky. When the United 
States Commissioners investigated the land- titles 
of the Louisiana settlers, they found that Boone's 
grant had never been registered. According to 
Spanish law, every settler was obliged to occupy 
and cultivate his claim within a certain time, 
and to obtain the approval of the governor at New 
Orleans as well as the signature of the lieutenant 
governor at St. Louis. Again Boone failed to take 
the necessary precautions, having Hved near, but 
not on, his farm, — and perhaps, in this instance, 
he was not entirely to blame. He understood the 
lieutenant governor, Delassus, to say that a 
syndic could hold his land by right of office only. 
The American commissioners were bound by ex- 
plicit directions ; no exception could lawfully be 



234 DANIEL BOONE 

made even in Boone's case. His grant was not con- 
firmed. The old backwoodsman, as Mr. H. 
Addington Bruce says/ *^was left, at the age of 
seventy-five, and after a career of exploration and 
pioneering unsurpassed by any man of his genera- 
tion, without a foot of land that he could call his 
own." 

The prairies, the forests, the herds of buffaloes, 
the bears, and the deer of Louisiana pleased Boone 
greatly, and during his term as syndic and for a 
time longer he hunted frequently. Although his 
sight was less keen, and his hand less steady than 
in his younger years, he still hunted with marked 
success. The great naturalist, John James Audu- 
bon, described him after one of these wanderings, 
as follows : 

"Daniel Boone, or, as he was usually called in 
the Western country. Colonel Boone, happened 
to spend a night with me under the same roof, more 
than twenty years ago. We had returned from a 
shooting excursion, in the course of which his ex- 
traordinary skill in the management of the rifle had 
been fully displayed. On retiring to the room ap- 
propriated to that remarkable individual and my- 
self for the night, I felt anxious to know more of 
his exploits and adventures than I did, and accord- 

^ Quoted from " Daniel Boone and the Wilderness Road." 



TRAVELING TOWARD THE SUNSET 235 

ingly took the liberty of proposing numerous ques- 
tions to him. The stature and general appearance 
of this wanderer of the western forests approached 
the gigantic. His chest was broad and prominent ; 
his muscular powers displayed themselves in every 
limb; his countenance gave indication of his 
great courage, enterprise, and perseverance; and 
when he spoke, the very motion of his lips brought 
the impression that whatever he uttered could 
not be otherwise than strictly true. I undressed 
whilst he merely took off his hunting shirt, and 
arranged a few folds of blankets on the floor, choos- 
ing rather to lie there, as he observed, than on the 
softest bed.'' 

Boone hunted every winter. Sometimes he went 
alone, but usually one or the other of his sons or 
an old Indian servant accompanied him. He had 
a horror of burial far from home, and made his 
servant swear to bring his body back to Femme 
Osage, in case of death in the forest. In spite of 
advanced years, he made long excursions through 
the great game fields that lay for hundreds of miles 
north, south, and west of St. Charles County. He 
traveled as far as Kansas and, when he was eighty, 
he made his way as far West as the Yellowstone. 
When emigrants from the East pressed into Mis- 
souri and disturbed his peace of mind, he wanted 



236 DANIEL BOONE 

to move still farther west, but the wisdom of his 
family prevailed and he remained with them. He 
paddled for weeks at a time in his canoe on the 
Missouri and its tributaries, taking his servant with 
him. He appeared ^'in the dress of the roughest, 
poorest hunter." When he was eighty-four, he 
wrote his son, Daniel Morgan Boone, that he 
hoped the next autumn to pilot a party of settlers 
and Osage Indians to visit the salt mountains, 
lakes, and ponds, five or six hundred miles westward, 
which were probably situated in the present 
Indian Territory. Tales of the far West fas- 
cinated him, as had Finley's stories of Kentucky in 
his early manhood, and any information regarding 
the Rocky Mountains or California, the beautiful 
land beyond them, he listened to eagerly. 

During the hunting expeditions of his old age, 
Boone was obliged to be constantly on the alert, 
as the Indians of the Northwest were often un- 
friendly and hostile. Twice in these later years he 
seems to have been in imminent danger. Once 
he was attacked by a few members of the Osage 
tribe who wished to rob him, but, with his own 
strength and cunning and the help of his servant, 
he was able to scatter them. During a winter 
excursion up the Grand River, — a stream rising 
in Iowa, whither he paddled alone, it is said, for 



TRAVELING TOWARD THE SUNSET 237 

trapping beavers, — he discovered an encampment 
of Indians near his own shelter. He feared that the 
savages would find his traps and so detect the 
presence of a white man, but, as good luck would 
have it, a snowstorm buried the traps. He had 
laid in a supply of venison, turkeys, and bear meat, 
and by keeping in hiding, and by cooking his food 
only in the dead of night when the smoke from his 
fire could not be seen, his presence was unsuspected. 
Twenty days later, when the snow had melted, the 
Indians broke camp and Boone's anxiety ended. 

Boone desired to obtain beaver skins in partic- 
ular, then worth nine dollars each in the market 
at St. Louis, as he wanted to settle his old debts in 
Kentucky. In 18 10, the season having been most 
successful, he set off for the East. Boone had kept 
no book account, it is said, and did not know how 
much he owed nor to whom he was indebted. 

''In the honest simplicity of his nature," writes 
Dr. John M. Peck, in his volume on Daniel Boone, 
''he went to all with whom he had had dealings, 
and paid whatever was demanded." 

The story goes that he returned to Missouri, happy 
and care-free, with only fifty cents left in his pocket. 

"Now," said he, "I am ready and willing to die. 
I have paid all my debts. No one will say when I 
am gone, 'Boone was a dishonest man.'" 



238 DANIEL BOONE 

In the East his old friends welcomed him warmly 
and, sympathizing with him in his loss of lands in 
Missouri, suggested that he make an attempt to 
regain them. They assured him of their support 
in any effort which he might make. They also 
told him that appreciation of his great work for the 
West was growing, and that he was fast becoming 
an heroic figure to Kentuckians. With this en- 
couragement, he framed a memorial to the Ken- 
tucky Legislature in 181 2, begging the members to 
help him in securing from Congress a new judgment 
regarding his grant in Missouri. He told at 
length the story of his work for Kentucky and of 
his misfortunes, and stated that he had appealed 
to Congress for relief. 

"Your memorialist," Boone said, "cannot but 
feel, so long as feeling remains, that he has a just 
claim upon his country for land to live on, and to 
transmit to his children after him. He cannot 
help, on an occasion like this, to look towards 
Kentucky. From a small acorn she has become a 
mighty oak, furnishing shelter to upwards of four 
hundred thousand souls. Very different is her 
appearance now from the time when your memorial- 
ist, with his little band, began to fell the forest 
and construct the rude fortification at Boones- 
borough." 



TRAVELING TOWARD THE SUNSET 239 

The petition was referred to the Senate of Ken- 
tucky and a resolution was adopted unanimously 
by both Houses, instructing their representatives 
at Washington to do all that was possible in Boone's 
behalf, it being "As unjust as it was impolitic 
that useful enterprise and eminent services should 
go unrewarded." 

Boone's appeal and this resolution were con- 
sidered by the Congressional Committee on public 
lands, and on December 24, 18 13, a favorable re- 
port was made. A few weeks later, by con- 
gressional enactment, possession of his Spanish 
grant was restored to the venerable pioneer. 

This appropriate recognition would have brought 
to Daniel Boone the complete satisfaction and 
happiness which he so richly merited, if he could 
have shared the honor with his wife. Before final 
legislative action was taken, Rebecca Boone passed 
away, deeply mourned by the hardy backwoods- 
man for whom her gentleness, generosity, and 
heroism had made her a fitting wife. With him 
she had braved and suffered the perils of the wilder- 
ness, always courageous, cheery, and confident 
in his ability and ultimate success. For more than 
half a century she had been his companion. 

Serene and sunny as ever at eighty-three, Boone 
left his own lonely home and went to Hve with his 



240 DANIEL BOONE 

daughter Jemima, who, it will be remembered, had 
married Flanders Calloway. He spent much 
of his time with his sons, Daniel Morgan and 
Nathan, but, with the coming of autumn, he grew 
restless. He longed to get away from the settle- 
ments and into the wilderness, to wander and hunt 
and be free. With a servant or a companion, he 
would put off in his canoe and paddle for weeks 
along, the Missouri and the many streams flowing 
into it. In summer he helped to farm, and during 
the winters he repaired rifles and traps and made 
powderhorns, tastefully carved, for his grand- 
children and friends. 

Many visitors from the East came to see him, 
some being greatly surprised to find so famous an 
Indian fighter so gentle and kindly. Their many 
questions called forth thrilling stories from their 
white-haired host, which he told gladly but with no 
ostentation. He looked upon his experiences and 
achievements only as the fulfillment of his duty. 

In 1819, the American artist, Chester Harding, 
called upon Boone for the purpose of painting his 
portrait.^ The artist found him alone in a cabin, a 
part of an old blockhouse, where he was staying 
during a hunt. He found him *' engaged in cooking 
his dinner. He was lying in his bunk, near the 
1 See frontispiece of this volume. 




O 

Q 
< 

w 
ffl 

U 

H 

< 

H 
Z 

W 

o 



TRAVELING TOWARD THE SUNSET 241 

fire," said Mr. Harding, ''and had a long strip of 
venison wound around his ramrod, and was busy 
turning it before a brisk blaze, and using salt and 
pepper to season his meat. I at once told him the 
object of my visit. I found that he hardly knew 
what I meant. I explained the matter to him, 
and he agreed to sit. He was (nearly) ninety 
years old, and rather infirm ; his memory of passing 
events was much impaired, yet he would amuse me 
every day by his anecdotes of his earlier life. I 
asked him one day, just after his description of 
one of his long hunts, if he never got lost, having 
no compass. 'No,' he said, 'I can't say as ever I 
was lost, but I was bewildered once for three days.' " 

Thus, among his affectionate children, grand- 
children, and friends, he lived for three years after 
Rebecca Boone's death. Then, with little warning 
and no suffering, he fell into his last sleep in his 
son Nathan's house, on September 26, 1820, in 
the eighty-sixth year of his age. He was buried 
beside his wife on the quiet bank of Teugue Creek, 
about a mile from the Missouri River. 

When he died, the convention for drafting the 
constitution of the new state of Missouri was in 
session at St. Louis. Upon hearing the news, the 
delegates adjourned for the day and wore crepe on 
their left arms for twenty days, in respect to Boone's 

R 



242 DANIEL BOONE 

memory. He passed away as quietly as he had 
lived, and at a time when the West, which he had 
helped to found, was taking another step of prog- 
ress. He died with a simple faith in God and in a 
life hereafter, as the following quaint and touching 
letter to his brother Samuel's wife shows. 

October the 19th 1816. 
Deer Sister 

With pleasuer I Rad a Later from your sun Samuel 
Boone who informs me that you are yett Liveing and in 
good health Considing your age I wright to you to Latt 
you know I have Not forgot you and to inform you of my 
own Situation sence the Death of your Sister Rabacah 
I Leve with flanders Calaway But am at present at my 
sun Nathans and in tolarabel halth you Can gass at my 
feilings by your own as we are So Near one age I Need Not 
write you of our satuation as Samuel Bradley or James 
grimes Can inform you of Every Surcomstance Relating 
to our famaly and how we Leve in this World and what 
Chance we shall have in the next we know Not for my part 
I am as ignerant as a Child all the Relegan I have to Love 
and fear god beleve in Jeses Christ Don all the good to my 
Nighbour and my self that I Can and Do as Little harm as 
I Can help and trust on gods marcy for the Rest and I 
Beleve god neve made a man of my prisepel [principle] to 
be Lost and I flater my self Deer sister that you are well on 
your way in Cristeanaty gave my Love to all your Childran 
and all my frends fearweU my Deer sister 

Daniel Boone. 



TRAVELING TOWARD THE SUNSET 243 

Twenty-five years later, when Kentucky had 
become an important state, when the forests along 
the Missouri River had been cut away, and the 
Mississippi Valley had begun to hum with life 
and business, the people of Kentucky realized 
that Daniel and Rebecca Boone were sleeping far 
from their real home. Daniel Boone had blazed 
the westward trail. Daniel and Rebecca Boone 
had conquered and loved the wilderness and had 
there built cabins. That wilderness had become the 
thriving state of Kentucky, and by legal proceed- 
ings, which Boone's simple nature could not fathom, 
it had bereft him of lands which belonged more 
rightfully to him than to any one else. Ought 
not the remains of Daniel and Rebecca Boone to 
rest in Kentucky soil? 

In 1845, the legislature of Kentucky sent com- 
missioners to Missouri to appeal to the people to 
allow them to carry out their wish. Reluctantly, 
the Missourians yielded. The remains were re- 
moved and re-interred in Frankfort Cemetery, 
Kentucky, September 13, 1845, with appropriate 
ceremonies and in the presence of a great gathering. 
According to the procession order, it was requested 
that all business be suspended during the services, 
and that all persons unite in the *' procession for 
the re-interment of the great pioneers of the West." 



244 DANIEL BOOXE 

Almost every section of Kentucky was represented 
and many came from the West and Southwest to 
attend the final honors to those who in Hfe had 
been so greatly respected and beloved. 

Thus Daniel and Rebecca Boone at last came 
home. 

Picturesque, unworldly, lovable, and heroic, 
Daniel Boone will always stand high among Ameri- 
can heroes. Biographers admit his faults and 
failings, and we know that he was neither the first 
explorer of Kentucky nor the first settler in the 
wilderness. Even his Wilderness Road has, in great 
measure, disappeared — yet Kentucky and the 
states beyond remain. 

Daniel Boone believed that he was especially 
ordained to open up the West for his country. 
There he Uved and toiled manfully for many long 
years, facing grave dangers, fighting Indians, and 
guiding pioneers to homes of plenty, and ultimate 
prosperity and peace. Much of what we now 
call the ^Middle W^est is so intimately associated 
with Daniel Boone that his own simple words are 
memorable — ''The history of the western country 
has been my history." 



Printed in the United States of America. 



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